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READ AND THINK. 

Who cannot think is a fool; 
Who will not think is a bigot; 
Who dares not think is a slave. 




THE 

SCHOOL QUESTION 



FROM A 



PARENTAL AND NON-SECTARIAN 




THE AUTHOR OFFERS $100 REWARD 

To anybody who can discover the least sectarian bias in his educa- 
tional platform {see page 82, etc.) All controversies as to such 
discovery to be settled by arbitration, each party selecting one arbi- 
trator, loith power in the two thus chosen to select a third. 

Let his accusers either earn this reward 6r else hold their peace. 



POISON DEOPS IN THE FEDERAL SENATE. 



THE 



CHOOL QUESTION 



ARENTAL AND NON-SECTARL N STAND-POINT, 



AN EPITOME OF THE EDUCATK UL VIEWS 






ZACH. MONTGOMERY 



VCCOUNT OF WHICH VIEWS A STUBBORN BUT FRUIT; SS EFFORT WAS MADE 
IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE TO PREVENT HIS CONFIRMATION 
AS ASSISTANT ATTORNEY-GENERAL. 



Compiled by himself from the United States Census Reports 
and from his otvn writing's. 



FIFTH EDITION. 



WASHINGTON : 

Gibson Bros., Printers and Bookbinders. 

1889. 







Virginia's crime column in 18C0 t 
1 criminal to every 6,5 CC. 



In order to prevent crime Mas 
sachusetts, as early as 1647, gave 
the educational control of chil- 
dren to the public, and after over 
200 years trial, to wit, in 1S60, 
she had 1 native white criminal 
to every 649 people. 



Virginia, down to 1S60, had al- 
ways left the educational control 
of children to their fathers and 
mothers, and the result was 1 
criminal to every 6,566 inhabi- 
tants. 



For proof of similar results wherever the parental and anti- 
parental systems have been tried read this book. Herein will be 
found the record evidence which the late Richard Grant White, of 
N. Y., declared — 

" Proves the case against the public-school system as clearly 
and tinde7iiably as the truth of New ton's theory of gravitation 
is proved by the calculations which enable astronomers to declare 
the motions and weigh the substance of the -planets." 
(See North American Review, Dec, 1S80.) 



Copyright, 1839, by Z. Montgomery. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter I. 



The school question in the United States Senate — An anonymous and 
libelous pamphlet quoted — Demand for this publication — Corres- 
pondence with Senators Ingalls and Edmunds — Endorsements by ex- 
Governor Burnett and Mr. Richard Grant White 1-8 

Chapter II. 

Crime in parental and anti-parental school States compared 9-20 

Chapter III. 

Another test — Difference in results between a small and a large dose of 
anti-parental education, when operating upon the self-same commu- 
nity 20-29 

Chapter IV. 

Yet another test— A voice from the grave of the suicide — Four times as 
many suicides, in proportion to population, where the State con- 
trols education, as where the parents control it— Cause of the differ- 
ence 29-36 

Chapter V. 

Mr. Wines, special agent, on the fearful increase of our insane, idiotic, 

blind, and deaf-mutes — Corresponding with growth of crime 36-38 

Chapter VI. 

Political poison in the public-school books — The mutilated, false, and 
forged Webster's Dictionary now in use in our public schools — Every 
leading political word in the language radically changed — Ten mil- 
lions of American children forced to daily drink the deadly doctrine 
of centralization and despotism!!! 3S-42 

Chapter VII. 

Mistakes of Catholics in dealing with the school question — Archbishop 

Hughes' petition — The work entitled " Catholics and Education "..42-47 

Chapter VIII. 

The Roman Pontiffs on the parental rights of non-Catholics — The equal 
rights of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Pagans upheld — Letter 
of Rt. Rev. Bishop O'Connell to the author — Important Pontifical 
instructions to American bishops concerning non-interference, in 
Catholic schools, with religious views of non-Catholic pupils 47-50 

Chapter IX. 

Specification of fatal errors in the New England school system — Sir 
William Blackstone, Kent, and Dr. Wayland on natural duties of 
parents — Public-school system in direct conflict with natural law — 
Difficulties in the way of harmony amongst friends of reform — A 
common ground for all — The anti-parental system dissected and 
analyzed 50-5S 

Chapter X. 

A voice from San Quentin — California's educated convicts; all the 
younger ones can both read and write — Two more penitentiaries 
3 



iv Contents. 

Paga 
necessary in Massachusetts — California public schools the high- 
road to the penitentiary — How the one serves as a preparatory 
department for the other — A forcible illustration "5S-65 

Chapter XI. 

Can the political State teach morals? — Impossible without teaching 
religion — Nor can the State teach religion without destroying re- 
ligious liberty 65-73 

Chapter XII. 

The Author interviewed — Not in favor of Archbishop Hughes' plan — 
The plan he favors, and how it would work— Danger to religious 
liberty of non-Catholics if such Catholics as endorse the present 
public-school system ever get control of the system 73—77 

Chapter XIII. 

The great battle-ground on which the educational question must be 

fought 77-32 

Chapter XIV. 

A non-sectarian platform of educational principles almost unanimously 
endorsed by those who have studied it — Publicly discussed in the city 
of Oakland at a large meeting presided over by State superintendent of 
public instruction and endorsed by a majority vote — Petition to Leg- 
islature signed by people of all creeds and callings — Views of Rev. 
Dr. John LeConte, president of California State University — Views 
of Rev. Dr. Joseph LeConte, of same University — Views of other 
prominent Protestant clergymen — Substantial endorsement by Con- 
gregational Council of California — Substantial endorsement by Pres- 
byterian Synod and by several leading American Roman Catholic 
bishops and archbishops — Endorsement by Cardinal Manning, of 
England— Seven answers to a prize question — Six in favor of pa- 
rental control against one in favor of State control in educational 
matters S2-99 

Chapter XV. 

A. vital question for public-school teachers — Want of discipline not due 
to incapacity of teachers, as charged, but to system itself — Teachers 
cannot control children when they receive their authority, not from 
the parent but from the public — Teachers at the mercy of every pu- 
pil who has an influential parent — Example given by Gail Hamilton, 
showing the humiliating position of public-school teachers — Profes- 
sor Carr on the subject — Every competent teacher prefers to rely on 
his own merits, rather than on the favor of politicians, for prefer- 
ment 99-116 

Chapter XVI. 

Extract from Sacramento speech by the author — Difference between pa- 
rental and anti-parental system in the production of great men — The 
charge of bigotry refuted — A word about so-called " Liberal Catho- 
lics " 117-120 

Chapter XVII. 

Henry George and Rev. Dr. McGlynn — Review of Henry George'*; 
Progress and Poverty — His premises false and illogical, and his 
doctrines communistic and dangerous, but in perfect harmonj' with 
the principles of the present public-school system 120-138 






CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY — THE SCHOOL QUESTION IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE — 
DEMAND FOR THIS PUBLICATION — CORRESPONDENCE WITH SENATORS 
INGALLS AND EDMUNDS STRONG AND ABLE ENDORSEMENTS BY WASH- 
INGTON PROTESTANT MINISTERS AND OTHERS. 

The vigorous and bitter fight made in the United States Senate 
against the author during the 49th session of Congress for the pur- 
pose of preventing his confirmation as Assistant Attorney-General, 
because of his views on the school question, seems to have awakened 
a very general desire in the public mind to know just what those 
views are. 

So frequent and so urgent have been the demands upon him — by 
letters and otherwise — for information on this subject, that he finally 
determined to meet this demand by republishing " Drops from 
the Poison Fountain," enlarged by the addition of certain other 
articles of his recently published in " The Family's Defender." 

This course seems the more necessary in view of the fact that 
some of those who supported his appointment have been called 
upon, and others are liable to be called upon, to justify their action 
in maintaining in official position a man entertaining such senti- 
ments upon this educational question and kindred subjects as have 
been charged — and some of them falsely charged — upon the writer. 

Senator Ingalls, of Kansas, charged the writer with having given 
utterance to sentiments such as were not only unpatriotic, but utterly 
incompatible both with his duties as a citizen and his oath as an offi- 
cer of the Government. 

But it will also be remembered that Mr. Ingalls did not tell the 
Senate nor the public that his only authority for making these 
charges was an anonymous pamphlet published in the city of San 
Francisco in 1873 in order to advance the partisan ends of a most 
intolerant band of anti-Catholic proscriptionists. Neither did the 
Senator reveal the fact that said publication was, at the time of its 
appearance, branded as false in a published card signed by more than 
a dozen as respectable gentlemen as could be found in said city. 

In a letter addressed by that writer to Mr. Ingalls relative to said 
charge, he said : 

" I am free to admit that if I had ever uttered or entertained the 
infamous sentiments you and your anonymous author attribute to me, 



2 "Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

I would not only be unfit to hold office, but unworthy the coun- 
tenance of all honorable and intelligent people. If the 'No-Popery' 
cry is to be the weapon with which my enemies propose to fight me, 
I trust that in future it may be an honest cry of, at least, seeming 
truth, backed by as much as one reputable name, and not resting 
solely on the false charges of an anonymous scribbler." 

During this contest, in order to meet boldly and fairly the opposi- 
tion which was being made to the writer, either because of the views 
falsely attributed to him, or because of his real views as expressed 
in " Drops from Poison Fountain," he sent a copy of said last- 
named pamphlet to every member of the Senate. 

Accompanying each pamphlet was a letter of which the following, 
to Mr. Senator Edmunds, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Com- 
mittee, is a fair sample, to wit : 

Department of the Interior, 
Assistant Attorney-General's Office, 

Washington, D. C, March ist, 1886. 
Hon. Geo. F. Edmunds. 

Dear Sir : Enclosed please find a pamphlet of my production, 
which, as I gather from Saturday's Washington Star, expresses sen- 
timents such as a majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee sup- 
pose to be sufficient proof of my unfitness for the office of Assistant 
Attorney-General. 

I cannot help thinking that the action of the committee must have 
been based on a mistaken notion as to the contents of this pamphlet, 
for whoever will cai-efully read it must see that its very life and 
soul and -power, for good or evil, lie in its truly startling statistics of 
crime. These have with great care and at some expense been com- 
piled from the United States Census Reports. In proof of the cor- 
rectness of my figures, I beg leave to refer you to the testimony of 
the late distinguished Richard Grant White, of New York, which 
you will find in a marginal note on page 5 of the accompanying 
pamphlet. If for publishing these statistics at my own expense I 
deserve to be forever ostracised from office, then what can be said 
in defence of those Hon. Senators and Representatives who originally 
enacted the law requiring these very same statistics to be gathered 
and printed at the people's expense? 

I have no apology to make for the publication of this pamphlet. 
Indeed, so important do I regard the work of making known its 
facts and figures to the American people, that nothing but my pov- 
erty prevents me from placing it gratuitously in the hands of every 
man, woman, and school-child in the United States, for I am fully 
persuaded that a general knowledge of these facts and figures would 
result in such a reformation in our public educational system as to 
place it in harmony with the God-ordained relations between parents 
and children. And this is all the reformation I ever desired or 
advocated. Be kind enough to examine this pamphlet and notify 



Introducto 



'■}'■ 



me of anything you may find therein tending to prove my unfitness 
for the office of Assistant Attorney. General, and much oblige, 
Yours, most respectfully, 

Zach. Montgomery. 

No answer to the above letter was ever received. 

The pamphlet referred to in the last preceding letter will be found 
incorporated into this little volume. It was concerning the matter 
contained in that same pamphlet that the Hon. Peter H. Burnett, 
California's first Governor under American rule, and one of the 
most eminent of her Supreme Court Judges, in a letter addressed to 
the author, said : 

" It is one of the most conclusive arguments I have ever read 
upon any disputed sitbject." 

The late Mr. Richard Grant White, of N. Y., who professed 
neither the religious nor political faith of the author, but who was 
a gentleman distinguished throughout the whole country for his 
learning, ability, and great accuracy as a writer, published in the 
North American Review for Dec, 1880, a carefully prepared arti- 
cle entitled 

" The Public-School Failure." 

The leading facts upon which Mr. White based his article — as he 
tells us himself — were taken from said pamphlet. In a foot-note to 
said article he says : 

"My attention was directed to these facts by a pamphlet on the 
•system of anti-parental education, by the Hon. Zachary Montgom- 
ery, of California, which I received on the 23d of October last, after 
the publication of my articles on the public schools in the New 
York Times. Mr. Montgomery's trenchant pamphlet contains very 
■elaborate tables, made up from the United States Census Reports. I 
have verified them by those reports, and find them essentially ac- 
curate and trustworthy '." 

As introductory to Mr. White's quotations from our tabulated 
statistics, he characterizes them as 

" Evidence which proves the case against the public-school sys- 
tem as clearly and as tendetziably as the truth of Newton's theory 
of gravitation is proved by the calculations which enable astrono- 
mers to declare the motions and weigh the sztbstance of the planets." 

And yet, for the publication of that evidence, and the drawing 
therefrom deductions which are as irresistible as that two and two 
make four, the author has been denounced upon the floor of an 
American Senate, and throughout the country by a certain class 



4 '■''Poison Drops'' in the Federal Senate. 

of politicians, as if he were unfit to live in any civilized community, 
and much less fit to be entrusted with any public office whatever. 
And all this, too— be it remembered — was done in the name of edu- 
cation, civilization, liberty, and progress ! ! ! 

Let the reader peruse the following pages, and then decide 
whether it is the author or his accusers that deserve the anathemas 
that have been heaped upon the head of the former. 

VIEWS OF PROMINENT PROTESTANT CLERGYMEN OF WASHINGTON, AND ELSE- 
WHERE, CALLED FORTH BY READING THE FIRST EDITION OF THIS WORK. 

Soon after its first publication copies of this work were sent to a 
considerable number of Protestant clergymen, and an expression of 
opinion relative to its position on the school question was asked for. 

The following letters and extracts from letters received in reply 
clearly demonstrate the non-sectarian character of the principles 
herein maintained, and show that they are sufficiently broad and 
liberal in their nature to challenge the approval of intelligent and 
honest people of every creed under the sun. 

METHODIST EPISCOPAL VIEWS. 

Rev. Dr. John H. Dashiell, a prominent Methodist minister of 
Washington, after reading this book, wrote, saying : 

" Schools can never take the place of home. Americans must 
not become Spartans. Freedom, representative government, and 
home abide together. Whatever tends to destroy parental influence 
is fatal to society and church and government." 

Rev. John P. Newman, since made a Methodist bishop, and one 
of the most widely-known preachers of his church in the United 
States, January 15, 1887, wrote: 

" Thanks for your able pamphlet, which I read last night. All I 
ought to say now on the subject is this : I agree with your funda- 
mental position in the abstract, that education of the child is the 
duty and right of the parent ; but the concrete is not possible now ; 
therefore the State should do what parents cannot or will not do." 

EPISCOPALIAN VIEWS. 

Rev. John B. Williams, a talented and influential Episcopalian 
minister of Bladensburg, near Washington, Jan. 12, 1887, after 
reading the book, wrote : 

" Years ago I lost all confidence in our secularized system, apart 
from the great constitutional objections with which you so justly 
assail it. God's way can never be abandoned without alarming re- 



Introductory. 5 

suits following. The principles enunciated have been mine for 
years ; the facts are new and startling." 

Rev. Dr. W. A. Leonard, one of Washington's most distinguished 
Episcopalian clergymen, Jan. 13, 1SS7, wrote, saying: 

" To your basal principle of parental right no one surely can 
hesitate to give assent, as you have presented and qualified or guarded 
it. If the criminal statistics grow, logically, out of the godlessness 
of our public education, there can be no question as to the vital im- 
portance of probing the wound down to the quick. My own posi- 
tion is a simple one. Education without christian religion as its 
leaven is as dangerons as a sharp-edged tool in the hands of a child." 

Very similar sentiments were expressed by Rev. John W. Philips, 
Rev. John S. Lindsay, and Rev. J. S. Townsend. 

A BAPTIST VIEW OF THE BOOK. 

March 29, 1887, Rev. G. W. McCullough, a distinguished Baptist 
minister of Washington, wrote, saying: 

" I have given some time and study to the school question as set 
forth by you, and I believe I can say I can endorse your platform of 
education with this exception — the taking out of our schools the 
Bible. I cannot see the wisdom or advantage of this." 

Another careful reading of the book would doubtless have satis- 
fied the revei-end gentleman that our platform neither proposes to 
take the Bible out nor to take it into the schools, but to protect the 
parent in his sacred right to select for his own children a school either 
with the Bible or without the Bible, just as he pleases. 

A LUTHERAN VIEW. 

Rev. S. Domer, a well-known and highly-respected Lutheran 



m 



inister of Washington, Jan. 19, 1887, wrote, saying, inter alia 



" Superficial as my examination has necessarily been, I have risen 
from the reading very favorably impressed. 

;i 1st. The platform : I like it. It seems to be radically principled 
in righteousness, and comprehensive enough to take in the entire 
range of the system. * * * The home, I most heartily agree, 
must be central in any advanced civilization and in any true system 
of education. The State should protect and cherish our familyhood 
in the highest degree, and in doing so give the largest freedom for 
the play of parental choices as to the educational and religious cul- 
ture of children. No more reason why the State should control in 
education than religion. I thoroughly agree with you that parents 
should have the right to choose their own schools for their children 



6 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

as well as the churches to which they shall go. And duty must be 
in the same direction. I would be glad to see a grand reformation, 
or rather regeneration, in our school system of th*» character indi- 
cated in your book and platform." 

A PRESBYTERIAN VIEW. 

Rev. Dr. A. W. Pitzer, a Presbyterian minister of Washington 
of marked ability, Jan. 18, 1887, wrote, saying: 

" Hearty thanks for your pamphlet. The present system of pub- 
lic schools is unconstitutional, unscriptural, and unnatural, and 
threatens our destruction in the future. 

" On page 74 I endorse all you say, beginning with the words, 
'I maintain,' etc., etc., and ending with the word ' educated,' six 
lines from the bottom. I would be glad to see you and compare 
views, and see if anything can be done to check the growing evil." 

A copy of the book was sent to Rev. Dr. R. L. Dabney, one of the 
most eminent and widely-known Presbyterian ministers in America, 
and a Professor in the State University of Texas, and after reading 
it, he wrote as follows : 

Austin, Texas, jfune 21, 1SS7. 
Hon. Z. Montgomery. 

Dear Sir : I have to thank you very heartily for the present of 
your book upon the methods of primary State education. You can 
have no stronger assurance of the sincerity of these thanks than is 
contained in the fact that your able discussions substantiate every 
point I made 15 years ago in Virginia, when opposing the fastening 
of this vicious system on that State. Of course you experience the 
same species of unfair retorts which fell to my lot, which was to be 
constantly represented as an enemy of education, and of the eleva- 
tion of the children of the masses. Every sensible man of course 
desires the true education and moral and mental advancement of all 
the young, and especially of the children of the poor. It has been 
my life's business to labor for this. The question between us and 
the new-fangled men is only the question as to the safest and best 
methods for attaining this end, confessed by all to be a good one. 
Now, to confound this plainest of distinctions and charge a man with 
being hostile to the valued end only because he opposes vicious 
methods tending to disappoint the end itself, is a resort too coarse 
and vulgar to be very honest. Especially is it hard for an honest 
man to recognize any candor in this method of attack after you have 
so clearly demonstrated by facts that the new-fangled method does 
not attain the proposed end, but increases crime and ignorance. 

A multitude of intelligent people throughout the country agree 
with you, of whom the most are afraid to show their heads. But 
telling exposures like yours will in time do their work. The real 
opposition which you have to meet is from the pecuniary self-interest 
of the vast office-holding class of school officials. They have effect- 



Introductory. 7 

ually found out this fact, that whether the new-fangled system realty 
educates the youth of the country or not, it opens a nice, broad path 
for their hands into the pockets of the tax-payers, and gives them a 
nice, plausible pretext in the popular cry for the " glorious cause of 
education " to widen that path and keep it open. Hence this impe- 
rious jealousy of all discussion, this tyrannical denial of the right 
of free thought, upon this one topic. It has come to this — that al- 
though the journals may be freely opened to the most outrageous at- 
tacks of an Ingersoll upon everything sacred in Christianity, no parent 
nor tax-payer is to be allowed to discuss the question whether this 
new-fangled method for educating his own children is safe and wise 
or not. Truly the Americans are a free people. 
Very respectfully, 

R. L. DABNEY. 

A HEBREW VIEW. 

Rev. L, Stern, a prominent Hebrew divine, and a hitherto admirer 
of the public-school system, March 1, 1887, wrote, saying: 

" At the present moment it is quite impossible for me to give your 
work the careful perusal it certainly deserves, and which alone could 
possibly cause me to modify my notions in regard to our public- 
school system, which, its vai-ious faults notwithstanding, in the main 
I have always admired. My impression is that your ideas expressed 
in paragraph 4, p. 83, could form the basis for a satisfactory recon- 
struction of the present system." 

A LETTER FROM A PUBLIC SCHOOL PRINCIPAL. 

On the 1 2th of September, 1888, Professor J. B. Specking, prin- 
cipal of the public schools of Washington, Mo., addressed a letter 
to the author, in which, among other things, he said : 

" I have just finished reading your little book on the school question for the 
second time. The more I have studied the matter the more convinced I have 
become that your position is the correct one. * * * But what troubles me 
most is this : Suppose that the whole business of teaching were thrown open 
to private enterprise, then since there are so many sects and factions each one 
of these would have to establish a school of its "own ; or, what seems to be 
the same, so many teachers would have to establish so many independent 
schools that it would be impossible to have anything like a graded system 
in towns of less than 10,000 inhabitants, while in country districts where they 
can scarcely afford to hire one teacher now, they, of course, could have no 
school at all. How could this difficulty be overcome ? " 

The following is a part of the author's reply : 

"It seems to me that your question can be best answered by supposing a 
case. Let us then take a neighborhood consisting of ten families averaging 
four children each of school age. And in order to make your difficulty as 
formidable as possible, we will suppose that each of these ten families repre- 
sents a denomination of religionists different from the others. Now you can 
truly say that in the case supposed it would be impossible for each of these 
families (upon the plan I propose) to have a teacher of its own denomination. 



S "Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

But it must be remembered that the plan for which I am contending does not 
rest on denominational, but on parental grounds ; and even so far as the de- 
nominational question is concerned, not one of these ten families would be 
any worse off under the plan proposed than under the present public-school 
system, for, as you know, the public-school laws forbid, and necessarily for- 
bid, the teaching of denominational doctrines in these schools. But while 
none of these ten families would, in a denominational point of view, fare any 
worse under the proposed plan than they now do under the existing system, 
it is easy to see that in a parental point of view they would fare much bet- 
ter, because the heads of these families could each exercise his own careful, 
conscientious judgment in the selection of the teacher who was to be entrusted 
with the sacred duty of moulding the character and to a large extent shaping 
the future destinies of his children. Neither would such a community be left 
long without a school. In proof of this, let us suppose that you yourself 
were seeking to establish a school in just such a community as that referred 
to; do you think that with your knowledge of human nature, and with your 
twelve years' experience in teaching, you would find it hard to secure the 
school patronage of every one of these families, even though you might dif- 
fer religiously from them all? Of course, in undertaking to establish a school 
in such a community, it would be not only your duty, but your interest, to 
have it understood in advance that you would scrupulously avoid both the 
use of any books and the teaching of any principles antagonistic to the relig- 
ious views of any class of people patronizing your school. If we suppose 
that you aie known to such a community to be a man of deservedly good 
moral character, and a perfectly competent teacher of the secular branches, 
what parent could reasonably object to allowing you to teach his children 
these branches, in view of the impossibility of having them taught in a school 
of his own denomination ? Most certainly the religious parent who could not 
safely educate his children in a non-sectarian school of his own selection could 
not safely nor consistently allow them to be educated in a non-sectarian school 
selected by a board of politicians. In other words, he could neither safely nor 
consistently allow them to be educated in a non-sectarian public school." 

The above is only a brief extract from the author's answer to Pro- 
fessor Specking. 

Some time afterwards, to wit, Nov. 28, 1SS8, the professor, in 

acknowledging its receipt, among other things, said : 

"Your lengthy and full reply to the difficulties which I proposed satisfied 
me that your plan was superior to the present public-school system in every 
respect. So well satisfied am I of this that I have determined to leave the 
public-school service at an early date, and to organize a private school of my 
own. I shall also, in the future, spare no effort to educate the people to see 
this all-important subject in its true light. But random effort will do but 
little good; we must be united in this great cause of educational reform." 



Crime in Parental and anti- Parental School States Compared, a 



CHAPTEE II. 

CRIME IN PARENTAL AND ANTI-PARENTAL SCHOOL STATES COMPARED. 

The writer intends to offer no apology to the reading community 
for this publication. As soon would he think of apologizing to the 
slumbering inhabitants of a city in flames for attempting to disturb 
their rest by the vigorous ringing of a fire-bell. Far better that they 
awake even in anger, than to awake not at all. 

If the reader will but follow us, even to the extent of a few pages, 
we promise to demonstrate, by incontestable facts and figures drawn 
from sources that will not and cannot be impeached, that the calamity 
at which we are endeavoring to alarm our countrymen is far more 
widespread and direful in its consequences than any conflagration 
that ever devastated a city. We promise to prove that our boasted 
New England public-school system, as now by law established 
throughout the length and breadth of the American Republic, is a 
poisonous fountain, fraught with the seeds of human misery and 
moral death. But, says the reader, how can that possibly be true? 
Can it be denied that an educated people are more-moral and virtu- 
ous, more contented, happy, and law-abiding than an ignorant peo- 
ple, and if so, how can it be charged that a system of education 
which almost entirely banishes illiteracy from the land is fraught 
with so much evil to those who are ^brought under its influence ? 
These are candid questions, and they shall receive candid answers. 
It is very true that ignorance is the mother of vice. It is also true 
that an educated people, if properly educated, are more moral, 
virtuous, contented, happy, and law-abiding than an ignorant peo- 
ple. 

Thus far, we think there can be no difference of opinion between 
the most inveterate supporter of the New England public-school 
system and ourselves. 

Now, keeping steadily in view this common stand-point, namely, 
that a people properly educated are more moral, virtuous, contented, 
happy, and law-abiding than an ignorant people, let us suppose that 
we somewhere find living, side by side, two communities, one of 
which is made up almost entirely of educated people, while the 
other is largely composed of illiterate people ; and let us further 
suppose that amongst those considered educated you find that in 
proportion to their population they have six criminals to where the 



ro " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

more illiterate community have but one ; suppose that they have 
nearly two paupers to where the more illiterate people have but 
one ; suppose that they have two insane to where the illiterates have 
only one ; suppose that their death list shows four suicides to where 
that of the illiterates shows but one ; and suppose that the same list 
shows three deaths from the criminal indulgence of the brutal pas- 
sions, while that of the illiterates shows but two, what conclusion 
would you arrive at with reference to that hind of education ? 

Adhering to the proposition with which we set out a moment 
ago, namely, that a people properly educated are more moral, vir- 
tuous, contented, happy, and law-abiding than an uneducated peo- 
ple, would you not be forced to the conclusion that there must be 
something wrong, terribly, radically wrong, in a system of edu- 
cation so much more direful in its results than even illiteracy itself? 

But just here, perhaps, the reader will ask us, as he has a right to 
ask, " what application has your supposed case to the question un- 
der discussion?" Just have a little patience, good reader, and you 
shall see the application. 

For this educated community, let us take the native born-white 
population of the six New England States, to wit, Massachusetts, 
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, 
and for the unlettered community, we will take the native-born 
whites of the six States of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Georgia, 
North Carolina, and South Carolina. It will be observed that the 
States thus enumerated are either a part of the original thirteen, or 
such as have been carved out therefrom. 

Both of these communities started on their career of existence 
about the same time ; both were composed mainly of people from 
the same part of Europe ; people who spoke the same language and 
had been accustomed to the same laws, manners, and usages ; peo- 
ple who possessed the same Christian religion, pretty much all of 
whom (outside of little Maryland) were of the protestant faith, and 
took as their religious guide the same Bible, and even the same trans- 
lation of that Bible. 

There was one important particular, however, in which these two 
communities widely differed at the very start, as we shall presently 
see. "More than two hundred years ago the principle was incor- 
" porated into the legislation of Massachusetts, that the whole peo- 
" pie must be educated to a certain degree at the public expense, 
" irrespective of any social distinctions." 1 

1 See work entitled " The Daily Public School," published by J. B. Lippincott In 186C, p. 181. 
See Kent's Commentaries, voL ii, p. 210. 



Crime in Parental and anti-Parental School States Compared. 1 1 

Again : " In Massachusetts, by statute, in 1647 each town consist- 
" ing of fifty householders was directed to maintain a school to teach 
" their children to read and write, and every town of one hundred 
" families was to maintain a grammar school to fit youth for the col- 
" lege. The common schools of Massachusetts have been kept up 
" to this day by direct tax and individual subscription, and nowhere 
" in a population of equal extent has common elementary education 
" been more universally diffused." 1 

" The compulsory system of supporting common and grammar 
" schools in each town is sustained, to this day, in Massachusetts, 
" and enforced by indictment." 3 

At a very early day, after their settlement, a similar system of educa- 
tion was adopted in all the other New England States, from which 
fact the system seems to have taken the name of " the New England 
" system." Chancellor Kent says : "In New England it has been 
" a steady and governing principle from the very foundation of the 
" colonies, that it was the right and duty of the government to pro- 
" vide, by means of fair and just taxation, for the instruction of all 
" the youth in the elements of learning." 3 

On the other hand, the six enumerated States, comprising what we 
have agreed to call the unlettered community, steadily resisted the 
New England system up to a very recent date. 

Virginia, which occupies about the same relation to the latter com- 
munity that Massachusetts does to the former, according to Lippin- 
cott's Gazetteer of the World, published in 1856, had at that time no 
general free school system, but " made an appropriation for the in- 
struction of the poor." 4 

Thus these two communities, the one with its New England pub- 
lic-school system, and the other withottt it, travelled along, side by 
side, for about two hundred years, until A. D. i860, when the eighth 
United States decennial census was taken, and the following was the 
showing of these two communities, as will appear by reference to' 
the annexed table No. 1. We find that at the date referred to, to 
wit, i860, Massachusetts and her five New England sisters had 
2,665,945 native-born white inhabitants, and out of these only 8,543 
adults who could not read nor write, while Virginia, with her five sis- 
ters, numbei-ed 3,181 ,969 native-born whites, of whom 262,802 adults 
could neither read nor write. So that in the six New England States 
the proportion of illiterate native whites was only one to every 312, 

1 See 2 Kent, 210-211. 

2 Commonwealth vs. Inhabitants of Dedham, 16 Mass. R., p. 141. 

3 See 2 Kent, 210. 

4 SeeLippincott's " Gazetteer of the World," published in 1856, p. 2049. 



12 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

while Virginia and her five sisters counted one illiterate to every 12. 
But mark you ! How stand the criminal lists? Massachusetts and 
her five sisters, out of her native white population of a little more 
than two and a half millions, had on the first of June, i860, just 
2,459 criminals in prison, while Virginia and her five comparatively 
unlettered companions, with a native white population of over three 
millions, had but 477 in prison. That is to say, those educated un- 
der the New England system had one native-born white criminal to 
every 1,084 native white inhabitants, while those who had generally 
rejected that system had but one prisoner to every 6,670, being a dis- 
proportion, according to the whole number of natives whites, of more 
than six criminals in New England to one in the other community. 1 
A glance at the same table will show that the natives educated under 
the New England system had one pauper to every 178, while those 
who had managed to live without that luxury had but one pauper to 
every 345. 

Of those who in one year had died by suicide, New England had 
one to every 13,285 of the entire population, while Virginia and her 
rive sisters had but one suicide to every 56,584, and of those who 
perished, the victims of their criminal lusts, New England had one 
to every 84,737, while her neighbors, that had never enjoyed her 
educational advantages, had but one such victim to every 128,729. 
We have not before us the list of insane in the several States for i860, 
so we borrow from the report furnished by the Census Marshal of 
1870, where it appears that the New England system produced (of 
those born and living in their native States respectively) one insane 
person to every 800 native-born inhabitants, while the rejection of 
that system resulted in one insane to 1,682 native inhabitants. 2 

1 Great care has been taken to avoid mistakes in these computations, but should any inaccuracy 
be discovered, the author will take it as a favor to be informed of the fact, so that it may be cor- 
rected in future editions. We omit fractions. 

- Since the appearance of the first edition of the "Poison Fountain," Prof. Samuel Royce, in a 
work published in Boston, entitled, " Deterioration and Eace Education," although he claims that 
" the power and wisdom of the State alone are to be trusted with this great work and responsi- 
bility " of educating the young, nevertheless admits on pages 462-3, upon the authority of an of- 
ficial report, that there is " hardly a Stale or count;/ in the civilized world where atrocious and fla- 
grant crimes are so common as in educated Massachusetts." And on page 36, while referring to 
the alarming increase of crime in America, he says : "Neither will it answer to lay it to the foreign 
element, the criminal rate of which has remained the same, or even lessened, while the native crimi- 
nals have increased during 1860-1870 from 10,143 to 24,173." 

It is sometimes claimed that the chief reason why the public-school States have so large a pro- 
portion of criminals is because of their large cities. It is undoubtedly true that, like every other 
kind of pestilence, this poisonous and crime-breeding system of education rages with more terrible 
fury in great cities than in small villages or country places ; but that its ravages are by no means 
confined to large cities is abundantly proved by statistics. For example : In 1860 eleven of Con- 
necticut's largest towns and cities did not equal in population the single city of Baltimore, the 
metropolis of Maryland, and yet Maryland had but one native white criminal to every 5,276 na- 
tive white inhabitants ; while Connecticut numbered one native white criminal to every 845 In- 
habitants. At that time Maryland had the public-school system in its infancy, while Connecticut 
had itin its maturity. But only ten years later, (in 1870,) when Maryland's expenditures for pub- 
lic-school purposes had swollen from $205,319 (the amount expended in 1860) to $1,146,057, her na- 
tive white criminals had correspondingly increased from one for every 5,276 to one for every 
1,717 Inhabitants. 



Crime in Parental and anti-Parental School States Compared. 13 



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Crime in Parental and anti- Parental School States Compared. 1 7 



Table 5—1870. 
In 1870, the several States and Territories of the United States, not counting 
Mississippi, Texas, and Utah, supported 183,198 public-school teachers, edu- 
cated 6,228,060 public-school pupils, at an expense of $64,030,673. (See Com- 
pendium of Ninth Census of the U. S. , page 488.) The following table is com- 
piled from the above source : 



Alabama 

Arkansas 

California 

Connecticut 

Delaware 

Florida 

Georgia 

Illinois 

Indiana 

Iowa 

Kansas 

Kentucky 

Louisiana 

Maine 

Maryland 

Massachusetts .. 

Michigan 

Minnesota 

Mississippi 

Missouri 

Nebraska 

Nevada 

New Hampshire 

New Jersey 

New York 

North Carolina.. 

Ohio 

Oregon ... 

Pennsylvania 

Rhode Island.... 
South Carolina.. 

Tennessee , 

Texas 

Vermont , 

Virginia , 

West Virginia..., 
Wisconsin , 



Total number of 
pupils, male and 
female, attend- 
ing the public 
schools in 1870. 



67, 203 

72, 045 

75, 527 

88,449 

16, 835 

10, 132 

11,150 

677, 623 

446, 066 

205, 923 

58,030 

218, 340 

25, 832 

152, 765 

83, 226 

242, 145 

254, 738 

103, 408 

320. 313 

15, 052 

1.856 

59, 408 

80, 105 

719, 181 
41, 912 

737, 693 
29, 822 

745, 734 
27, 250 
31, 362 
82, 970 

52, 067 

8,700 

101, 493 

337, 008 



Total income used 
for public-school 
purposes. 



552, 461 

1, 627, 733 
1,426,846 

127,729 

76, 389 

175, 844 

7, 810, 265 

2, 063, 599 
3, 245, 352 

660, 635 

1, 150, 457 

473, 707 

843, 435 

1, 146, 057 

3, 207, 826 
2, 164, 489 

895, 204 

3, 092, 733 

182, 160 

81, 273 

403, 310 

1, 562, 573 

8, 912, 024 
205, 131 

8, 528, 145 
139, 387 

7, 292, 946 
355, 582 
279. 723 
683, 008 

516, 702 

98, 770 

599, 811 

2,209,384 



Cost to every 
pupil, being — 



$9 36 

7 66 

21 55 

16 13 

7 58 

7 53 
15 77 
11 52 

4 62 
15 75 

11 37 

5 26 

18 33 

5 52 
13 77 
13 24 

8 49 

8 65 

9 65 

12 10 
43 78 

6 78 

19 56 

12 38 
4 89 

11 56 
4 67 
9 77 

13 04 
8 90 



9 92 
11 35 



6 55 



i8 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

One very noticeable fact in this connection, as shown by the fore- 
going tables, is that in the State of Massachusetts, which claims the 
honor of being the founder of the New England system of education, 
while she had by far the smallest porportion of illiterate native-born 
adults of any, even of the New England States, she had at the same 
time much the largest proportion of native white criminals, having 
one criminal to every 649 native white inhabitants. 

The nearest approach to her was the showing made by the State 
of Connecticut, where there was one native white criminal to every 
S45 native white inhabitants. 

And now, good reader, if you will take the pains to turn to the 
sixth column of figures in table three, which shows the relative pro- 
portion of native-born white criminals in every State in the Union 
in i860, you will see that Massachusetts stands solitary and alone in 
the grand and magnificent proportions of her criminal list. Califor- 
nia at that time came next to her chosen model, having one native- 
born white criminal to every 697 native whites, while, as above 
stated, Massachusetts had one to every 649. 

California seems to have resolved, however, not to be surpassed in 
her crime list even by her great exemplar, for when the next decen- 
nial census reports were returned, to wit, in 1870, California made 
a showing of one native white criminal to every 512 native white in- 
habitants, thus carrying off the palm which ten years before had 
been awarded to the old State of Massachusetts. 

In view of the foregoing facts and figures, is it any wonder that 
the Boston correspondent of the San Francisco Morning Call tells 
us " that a large number of public-school men have come to the 
" conclusion that the public-school system of that city is a failure P" 1 
Or is it surprising that another of our leading dailies, the Alta Califor- 
nia, speaking editorially of the same system as it exists in this State, 
calls it " our anaconda," and declares that if we are to "judge this 
" system by its apparent fruits, we shall have to pronounce it not 
" only a melancholy but a most disastrous failure, and that it will 
4 ' be idle to look for the cause of the general rowdyism, idleness, and 
" viciousness of the rising generation anywhere but in the training 
" which it has been receiving ?" 3 

Even after the civil war, which raged with such terrible fury over 
the Southern and Southwestern States during the years from 1861 
to 1865, whereby property to the value of thousands of millions of 
dollars was destroyed, a servile race was emancipated, and the very 

1 See Morning Call of August 5, 1877. a Alta editorial, January 31, 1872. 



Crime in Parental and anti-Parental School States Compared. 19 

foundations of the whole social and political fabric upheaved and 
broken to atoms — even after all the bad government which bad white 
men and bad black men had succeeded in forcing upon the subjugated 
States — still, when the census reports for 1870 were published, they 
showed that neither their native white criminals nor paupers counted 
in the proportion even of so much as one to where those counted 
two who had been for two hundred years subjected to the ravages of 
the New England public-school system. (See table No. 2.) 

And this precious system of education is the great boon for which 
in 1870 the American people were paying to the tune of $64, 030, 673, x 
while at the same time they were grinding through this mill of moral 
death no less than 7,628,060 children. In order to maintain this 
very same system, California alone expended during the last fiscal 
year no less than $2,749,729.46, as appears from the recently pub- 
lished biennial report of the State Superintendent of Public Instruc- 
tion . ♦ 

Indeed, so infatuated has our young State become with this crime 
.and pauper-breeding system of public instruction, that she has made 
it a penal offence for the parent or guardian of any child between 
the ages of 8 and 14 years to keep such child from the public school, 
•even for the sake of sending it to a far better private school of his 
own choice, and at his own expense, unless he first seeks and obtains 
the gracious permission of the school directors so to do. 

But lest the reader should be disposed to doubt the existence of so 
tyrannical a statute, here it is as enacted by the California Legisla- 
ture on the 28th day of March, 1874 : 

" Section i . Every parent, guardian, or other person in the State 
of California, having control and charge of any child or children be- 
tween the ages of 8 and 14 years, shall be required to send any such 
child or children to a public school for a period of at least two-thirds 
of the time during which a public school shall be taught in each city 
and county, or school district, in each school year, commencing on 
the first day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight 
hundred and seventy-four, at least twelve weeks of which shall be 
consecutive, unless such child or children are excused from such at- 
tendance by the Board of Education of the city, or city and county, 
or of the trustees of the school district in which such parents, guar- 
dians, or other persons reside, upon its being shown to their satisfac- 
tion that his or her bodily or mental condition has been such as to 
prevent attendance at school, or application to study for the period 
required, or that the parents or guardians are extremely poor or sick, 
■or that such child or children are taught in a private school or at 
home in such branches as are usually taught in the primary schools 

1 In 1880 the amount was over $90,000,000. 



20 " Poison Drops " in the Federal Senate. 

of this State, or have already acquired a good knowledge of such 
branches ; Provided, In case a public school shall not be taught for 
three months during the year, within one mile by the nearest travelled 
road of any person within the school district, he shall not be liable 
to the provisions of this act." 

" Section 3. In case any parent, guardian, or other person shall 
fail to comply with the provisions of this act, said parent, guardian, 
or other person shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall 
be liable to a fine of not more then twenty dollars ; and for the second 
and each subsequent offence, the fine shall not be less than twenty 
dollars nor more than fifty dollars, and the parent, guardian, or other 
person so convicted shall pay all costs. Each such fine shall be 
paid to the clerk of the proper Board of Education or of the dis- 
trict trustees." 

Thus it is that the votaries of this system have absolutely under- 
taken, by the most tyrannical legislation, to strip every parent of the 
guardianship of his children, and to transfer their entire control to 
an irresponsible Board of School Trustees ; so that if these school 
directors choose to appoint a libertine or a harlot as the tutor of your 
daughters, and at the same time refuse their gracious permission for 
you to send them to a private school of your own choice, it is with 
fines or prison dungeons that the law proposes to reward you, should 
you, in obedience to the dictates of right, reason, and your own con- 
science, seek to shield them from the contaminating touch of a vile 
teacher. Is it any wonder that vice flourishes or that virtue perishes 
under the influence of such a system ? 



CHAPTER III. 

ANOTHER TEST — DIFFERENCE IN RESULTS BETWEEN A SMALL AND A LARGE 
DOSE OF ANTI-PARENTAL EDUCATION WHEN OPERATING UPON THE SELF- 
SAME COMMUNITY. 

In their desperate efforts to find some plausible explanation for 
the astounding growth of crime in the public-school States, in 
excess of that found in the parental-school districts, which will 
vindicate their idolized " system" the advocates of State governed 
schools have sometimes claimed that the difference between the 
number of convictions for crime in the public-school States and the 
number found in the parental-school States is owing to a variety 
of local causes, entirely unconnected with and independent of 



Another Test. 21 

difference in educational systems. But a complete refutation of this 
assumption is found in the following statistics of public-school edu- 
cation and crime, demonstrating that in the very same localities 
every material increase of expenditures for public-school purposes 
has, without a single exception, been followed by a corresponding 
increase of crime. For example : 

MASSACHUSETTS. 

In 1850 the State of Massachusetts had a native white population 
of 827,43a. 1 

At that date her public-school pupils numbered 176,475, and her 
income for the support of these schools was $1 ,006,795, being $5.70 
to each pupil. 2 

With this comparatively limited expenditure for the maintainance 
of her anti-parental schools, she had, out of a native population of 
827,430, but 653 native-born criminals, being only one to every 
1,267 na tive inhabitants. 

This, comparatively speaking, was a very small number for a pub- 
lic-school State, though a very large number when compared with the 
number of criminals in any parental or private-school State. 

But coming down to 1880, just thirty years later, we find that her 
income for public-school purposes had swollen to $4,696,612 for the 
benefit of 316,630 public-school pupils, being $14.83 per pupil, count- 
ing every pupil that attended school at any time during the year. But 
Massachusetts expended on her schools during that same year more 
than her income, to wit, the sum of $4,720,951 , being $20.03 f° r the 
pupils in average daily attendance. 

And out of a native-born white population of 1 ,320,897 there were 
2,070 adult native white convicts, 3 being one to every 638 inhabitants 
in place of one to every 1,267 as m ^o, and this leaves out of the 
count some 608 juvenile convicts, confined in various -reformatory in- 
stitutions. By including these, the native white convicts of Massa- 

1 See " Compendium of Census for 1870," page 534. 

- This article was written in 1884, in San Diego, California, and not having the United States 
Census Reports for 1850 before me, I took from " Lippincott's Gazetteer of the World," (old 
edition,) both for Massachusetts and Louisiana, the amount expended on their public schools 
in 1850, and also the number of pupils then being educated in those schools. 

The statistics (for 1850) of the other States are taken from the " Compendium of the United 
States Census of 1870," where they are reproduced from the census of 1850. In this compen- 
dium the pupils both of public and private schools are enumerated together, as are also the ag- 
gregate expenditures for educational purposes, so that the amounts given, small as they may 
seem, even exceed the then expenditures for public schools. 

Also, at least a small portion of the children enumerated for 1850, even in the States of Con- 
necticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island, were being edu- 
cated in private schools. 

But inasmuch as there was far more virtue in those States in 1850 than in 1880, it is not prob- 
able that the friends of the system will complain of a failure to credit any of said pupils to private 
schools.— Editok. 

3 See " Compendium United States Census for 1880," pages 332, 1638-39. 



22 t; Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

chusetts, in 1S80, would amount to one out of every 493 native white 
inhabitants. 

CONNECTICUT. 

Turning now to Connecticut, " the land of steady habits," we find 
an entirely similar condition of things. In 1S50 Connecticut had in 
her schools 79,003 pupils, wilh an income for school purposes of 
$430,826, being $5.45 per pupil. At that time her native popula- 
tion 1 numbered 331,560, of whom 244 were convicts, being one to 
every 1,358 native inhabitants. 

But in 1880 2 her income for public schools was $1,441,255, being 
$12.15 f° r evei T pupil that attended at any time during the year ; 
or, counting only the 72,725 pupils in average daily attendance, 
it would be $19.81 per pupil, and out of a native white popu- 
lation of 481,060 she had 432 adult criminals, being one to every 
1,136, leaving out of the count 403 juvenile convicts, the most damag- 
ing portion of the whole record, which, when added to the adults T 
makes 835 criminals, or one to every 576 native whites. 8 

VERMONT. 

Likewise in 1S50 Vermont had an income for school purposes of 
$246,604 for the education of 100,785 pupils, 4 being $2.44 per pupil. 
At that time she had a native population of 280,055, °f whom only 
64, or one to every 4,372, were criminals. But turning to the cen- 
sus report for 18S0, we find her expending $452,693 upon 73,237 
pupils, being $6.31 per pupil, or counting only the 47,206 pupils in 
average daily attendance and we have $9.58 per pupil. And instead 
of one criminal to every 4,372 inhabitants, as in 1850, she had out 
of a native white population of 290,281 just 196 adult native con- 
victs, being one to every 1,481 native whites. When to these are 
added 134 native white juvenile offenders, of whom she seems to 
have had none in 1S50, we shall have an aggregate of 330, or one 
native white criminal to every 879 native whites. 

1 See " United States Compendium Census for 1870," page 534. The report before me for 1850 
makes no separate classification of the whole number of native whites and native blacks in the 
free States. — Editor. 

! See Census for 1880. 

3 The United States Commissioner of Education in his report for 1881, pages 686 to 691, enu- 
merates 71 reformatory institutions in the United States. Only six of these were in existence in 
1850, to wit, two in Massachusetts, three in New York, and one in Philadelphia, so that it is taken 
for granted that prior to that time children in Connecticut were either less addicted to crime than 
at present, or else they were sent to prison like other criminals, and were consequently included 
in the enumeration of criminals. 

* See " Compendium United States Census Report* for 1870," p. 492. 



Another Test. 



NEW HAMPSHIRE. 



23 



New Hampshire, in 1S50, expended on her schools, public and 
private, the sum of $221,146 for the education of 81,237 pupils, 
being $2.72 per pupil, and at that time, out of a native population 
of 303,563, she had just 25 native criminals, being one to every 
12,142. But thirty years later we find her with an income of $559,- 
133 for the use of 64,670 pupils, being $8.64 for every pupil attend- 
ing school at any time during the year, or $11.42 per pupil if we 
only count the 48,943 in average daily attendance, and, presto, 
change, instead of one native criminal to every 12,142 as in 1850, 
when expending about one-fourth as much for each pupil, she has 
out of 299,995 natives 209 native white criminals, or one to every 
1 .435 native white inhabitants. If to these be added New Hamp- 
shire's native white juvenile criminals for 1880, to wit, 91, we shall 
have an aggregate of 300, or one to every 999 of her native white 
population. 

MAINE. 

In 1850 Maine's total expenditures for schools, public and private, 
was $380,623 for the education of 199,745 P u pils, being $1.90 per 
pupil, and at that time, out of a native population of 550,878, she 
had but 66 native criminals, being one to every 8,346 native inhabit- 
ants. 

But in 1880 her income for public schools reached the sum of 
$1,074,554, for the use of 150,811, being $7.11 for every pupil that 
attended school at any time during the year, or if we count only the 
106,760 in average daily attendance we shall have $10.00 per pupil ; 
and out of a native white population of 588,193 she had 321 adult 
native white criminals, being one to every 1,832, and if we add her 
112 native white juvenile criminals we shall have 433, or one to every 

RHODE ISLAND. 
Rhode Island, in 1850, expended on all her schools $136,729 for the 
benefit of 24,881 pupils, being $5.53 per pupil, and out of a native 
population of 123,564 she had ^8 criminals, being one to every 2,130. 
But in 1880 her public-school income was $541,810 for the benefit 
of 42,489 pupils, being $12.74 f° r evei T pupil that attended school 
at any time during the year, or if we only count the 27,453 m aver " 
age daily attendance, we should have $19.73 per pupil, and out of a 
native white population of 196,108 she had 187 native white adult 
criminals, being one to every 1,049 na *ive white inhabitants. Add 



24 ' ' Poison Drops " in the Federal Senate. 

to these her 141 native white juvenile offenders, and we have 328, or 
one to every 597. 

This completes the circuit of the six New England States where 
the system originated, where it has longest existed, and its results 
have been the most thoroughly tested. 

LOUISIANA. 

Of all the States of the Union, Louisiana, thirty years ago, was 
the most lavish in the expenditures of her money for public or anti- 
parental school purposes. According to " Lippincott's Gazetteer of 
the World," (see old edition, p. 1091,) Louisiana had, in 1850, 664 
public schools with 25.046 pupils, and $349,679 income for public- 
school purposes. The amount would be $13.96 per pupil for every 
child attending the public schools, which was more than double the 
amount at that time being paid even by any of the New England 
States, and the result was already cropping out in her criminal sta- 
tistics, for during this same year the United States Census Reports 
show that out of a native white population of 186,577 she had 240 
native criminals, being one to every 777, by far the largest criminal 
record in proportion to population at that time to be found anywhere 
in America, if not in the world. 

Still, in order to prevent crime, she continued to increase her 
expenditures for public-school purposes, until in 1870 she was 
expending $473,000 on 25,832 pupils, amounting to $18.33 P er 
pupil ; and the result was, that out of a native white population of 
301,450 she had 460 native white criminals, being one to every 
655 native white inhabitants. 

But coming down to 1880, Louisiana — according to the census 
reports of that year — out of a native white population of 402,177, 
had but S9 native white convicts in prison, being but one to every 

Lest some enthusiastic admirer of our great and glorious system, 
in a desperate effort to find one supporting fact for his tottering 
idol, should jump to the conclusion that this great falling off in 
Louisiana's catalogue of criminals, between 1850 and 1S80, was 
owing to her increased anti-parental education facilities, let us 
caution him to first glance at her educational statistics for that year. 
From these statistics he will learn that Louisiana's public-school 
income was but $498,409 for the benefit of 81,012 public-school 
children, being only $6.15 per pupil; or counting only those in 
daily average attendance, it would be still only $8.93 per pupil, in 
lieu of the $18.33 P er pupil in 1870. 



Another Test. 25 

NEW YORK. 

In 1850 the State of New York had a native-born population of 
2,436,771. She then had in her schools, all told, 727,156 pupils, at 
an annual cost of $2,431,247, or $3.34 per pupil. At that time her 
native-born criminals numbered only 649, or one native-born crimi- 
nal to every 3,754 native inhabitants. 

But with the laudable purpose of lessening the tendency of hei 
people to commit crime, the State government went on year by year 
increasing the burdens of taxation for public-school purposes, until 
in 1880 her receipts for the education of 1,027,938 children were 
$11,035,511, being $10.78 for every pupil that entered her schools 
at any time during the year, and the result was that, with a native 
white population of 3,807,317, she had 5,177 native white criminals 
in prison, being one to every 741 people, instead of one to every 
3,754 as in 1850. That is to say, having increased her expenditures 
for anti-parental and godless schools a little more than three hun- 
dred per cent, in order to decrease crime, she was rewarded by 
an increase of crime to the tune of ov ex jive hundred per cent. 

What seems astonishing is that, in the face of these appalling 
facts, the demand for more money, more money, still goes forth 
from those who have grown rich by the ruin of the rising genera- 
tion. We shall here extract from the report of the United States 
Commissioner of Education for 1881 (page 71) the following re- 
freshing piece of information. 

Referring to New York's State Superintendent as his authority 
the Commissioner says : 

" With an increase of nearly 21,000 in the number of youth, five 
to twenty-one years of age, there was a decrease of over 10,000 in 
public-school enrolment, and over 13,000 in average daily attend- 
ance. * * * He thinks the schools increased in efficiency in 
greater proportion than the attendance fell off, and that the results 
attained justified the expenditure, which was $511,026 greater than 
the preceding year. * * * The figures show a smaller number 
of public-school houses, but a greater estimated value of school prop- 
erty, 28,000 fewer volumes in district libraries, an average school 
term of one day shorter, fewer men and more women teaching, but 
a slight increase in their average pay." 

Here is certainly some valuable food for reflection for such as have 
stomachs sufficiently strong to digest it. From this statement it 
would appear that the cost of public-school work in the State of New 
York increases in an inverse ratio to the number of pupils taught, 
while, as we have seen, crime increases in direct proportion to 
such cost. 



26 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

But, says the Superintendent, " the schools increased in efficiency 
in greater proportion than the attendance fell off." And the only 
evidence he furnishes us in corroboration of this statement is found 
in the fact that 28,000 volumes disappeared from the district 
libraries in the short period of one school year. History tells us 
that in ancient Sparta the most accomplished and highly honored 
youths were those who could steal without being caught. But we 
very much doubt if Sparta's lads in her palmiest days could have 
purloined 28,000 books in so short a time and escaped detection. 

OHIO. 

In 1850 Ohio had a native population of 1,757,746, and was 
expending on 502,826 pupils $1,018,258, or $2.02 per pupil, and 
at that time she had but 102 native-born criminals, being one native 
criminal to every 17,232 people. But in 1880 she was receiving from 
the people $11,085,315 for the public-school education of 752,944 
pupils, being $14.72 per pupil, and out of a native white popu- 
lation of 2,723,582 she had 1,674 criminals, being one to every 
1,626, in place of one to every 17,232 as in 1S50. In other words, 
while Ohio was increasing her expenditures upwards of sevenfold 
in order to check crime, her criminals increased upwards of tenfold. 

(See United States Census Report for 1880.) 

ILLINOIS. 

Take, again, the State of Illinois. In 1S50 that State was expend- 
ing on 130,411 pupils $403,138, or $3-oS per pupil. And out of 
a native population of 736,149 she had 164 criminals, being one 
to every 4,488. But she went on increasing her godless educa- 
tional fund until in 1880 she was expending, on 704,041 children, 
$9,850,011, being $13.99 P er P u pil \ an d out of a native white pop- 
ulation of 2,448,172 she had 2,223 native-born white criminals, or 
one to every 1,101. To put the case in words instead of figures, 
it may be stated thus : 

In order to prevent crime and thus protect the property, the lives, 
the liberties, and the reputations of her citizens, Illinois, in the space 
of thirty years, more than quadrupled her annual expenditures per 
capita for the anti-parental education of her pupils, and the result 
was that she more than quadrupled the ratio of her native-born 
'white criminals to prey upon her people. 

We cannot, in the short space of one article, review the history 
of education and crime in all the States, but we must not close with- 
out a brief allusion to our own California. 



Another Test. 



-7 



In i860 California had in her public schools 24,977 pupils, with 
an income for public-school purposes of $353,096, being $14.13 
for each pupil. Her record of crime amongst her native-born 
whites at that time surpassed everything in the United States except 
that of Massachusetts. She then had out of a native white popula- 
tion of 233.466, some 336 native white convicts, being one to every 
694. But in 1880 California collected an income of $3,525,520 for 
the use of 161,477 pupiis, being $21.83 apiece for each pupil that 
ever darkened the door of a public-school house at any time during 
the year, or $33.20 each for the 106,179 in average daily attend- 
ance, and she had a corresponding crop of adult native white 
criminals of 1,396 out of a native white population of 549,529, be- 
ing one to every 393 of her native white population. And if to 
these we add her 142 native white youths serving their time in re- 
formatories, we shall have one native white criminal to every 357 
native white inhabitants. 

In conclusion let us take a bird's eye view of this question of anti- 
parental education and crime, as it affected the whole country at 
the two periods above-named, to wit, in 1850 and in 1880. 

In 1850, our income in the whole United States for our public 
and private schools was $16,162,000. The whole number of pupils 
in both classes of schools at that time was 3,642,694, consequently 
our expenditures for educational purposes were $4.40 per pupil. 
At that time our native white population numbered some 17,308,460, 
and our native white criminals 4,326, or one to every 4,001 of the 
native white population (omitting fractions.) ' 

But in 18S0 our public school income alone reached the enormous 
sum of $96,857,534,! being $9.72 per pupil for each of the 9,946,- 
160 pupils who at any time during the year entered a public-school 
house ; or, counting only the 6,276,398 in average daily attendance, 
and we have $15.43 P er P u pil- And during that year (1880) out 
of a native white population of 36,843,291 we had 29,377 s native 
white criminals, making one criminal for every 1,254 inhabitants, 
instead of one to every 4,001 as in 1850. If to the above number, 
29,377 native white adult convicts, we add the 9,118 native white 
juvenile convicts in our seventy-one reformatory institutions, we 
shall have 38,495, or one to every 957 native white people. 

Should any mistake in any of our figures be discovered, we shall 
be obliged to the person making such discovery to inform us of the 



1 This is independent of expenses of State officers of public instruction, normal schools, col- 
leges, and schools for Indian children. 

2 The whole number of native convicts as given in the Census Reports for 1880 was 46,338, 
16,961 of whom were colored. Deducting these leaves the number above given. 



28 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

fact, as we have no desire to perpetrate an injustice, even against as 
great an enemy of our race as we believe our anti-parental public- 
school system to be. 

We here take occasion to caution the reader — as we have done 
before — against drawing from our figures or our arguments any in- 
ference that we look upon education as the cause of crime. On the 
contrary, we maintain that ignorance is the mother of vice. But it 
is against a false system of education that we are leveling our bat- 
teries — a system that intrusts to politicians an authority over the 
child which can only be properly wielded by its own parents. 

In the face of these startling statistics, is it not high time for those 
who claim that the present public-school system tends to diminish 
crime, to point out at least one State or 07ie fraction of a State 
where the system has not produced exactly the opposite result ? 

Our figures are official, and if any friend of our present public- 
school system will take them, read them, study them, and from 
them or any other reliable authority prove that the present public- 
school system tends to prevent crime, he will perform a more stu- 
pendous miracle than if he should raise the dead to life. 



A DIALOGUE WITH A MORAL UNDERSTOOD. 

Madam Jonathan, whose son, young Jonathan, lies at death's door from 
a tumor, consults Dr. Plain Talk. 

Madam Jonathan. " Oh, Dr., what shall I do?" 
Dr. Plain Talk. " Well, madam, what's the matter now?" 
Madam Jonathan. "Oh, Dr., my poor, poor boy Jonathan Junior had a 
mite of a tumor, the size of a pea, you know, and we called in Dr. Puffum- 
big, and Dr. Puffumbig said : ' Give the boy, every day, an ounce of some 
sort of stuff he called ' common skules,' just to purify the blood and dry up 
the tumor, you know. And I gave it to Jonathan Junior, and in a week's 
time the tumor was as big as a hen's egg. And Dr. Puffumbig said, ' Double 
the dose of common skules.' And I doubled it. And in another week the 
tumor was as big as your head, Dr. And Dr. Puffumbig said it was all 
because I was too pleggy stingy with the ' common skules.' 1 ' Give him at 
least a found of common skules three times a day,' said Dr. Puffumbig. And, 
fool like, I gave it, and now that ugly tumor is as big as a milk-pail. Oh, 
Dr., what shall I do?" 

Dr. Plain Talk. " Well, madam, if it is your desire to turn your boy 
all into tumor I must say you have the right doctor, and he has prescribed 
the right treatment. In fact, I think you might ransack the apothecaries of 
the infernal regions without finding anything better suited to such a purpose. 
And, pray, what is your own opinion, madam?" 

Madam Jonathan (pensively). "I guess it's a mighty nice thing for Dr. 
Puffumbig, who sells his nasty stuff for $96,000,000 at a dash, but a horrid 



Tet Another Startling Test. 29 

thing for my J>oor Jonathan Senior and Jonathan Junior, too, since the one 
has to foot these monstrous bills, while the other is dying of the tumor made 
an awful sight worse by the dirty fizen of that unmitigated old quack." 



CHAPTER IY. 

YET ANOTHER STARTLING TEST — A VOICE FROM THE GRAVE OF THE SUICIDE. 

The gratuitous and utterly unsupported assertion has sometimes 
been made by the friends of State-controlled education that the reason 
why statistics show the largest list of criminals in those localities 
where the most money has been lavished upon the public schools is 
because those are the only localities where the criminals are all, or 
nearly all, caught and convicted ; while in those places where there 
is little or no public-school training the criminals cannot be caught. 

Now it will scarcely be denied that dead criminals can be caught 
even in those States where they have no public schools. 

Then how stands the record with reference to this particular class 
of criminals? 

As we have already seen, it was in the early period of their first 
settlement in America that the colonists of Massachusetts, Maine, 
Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island tried the 
experiment of taking from the fathers and mothers the educational 
control of their own children and entrusting it to the general public, 
while six other colonies, to wit, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, 
Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina left this educational 
control of children in the hands of parents, their natural guardians. 
With slight exceptions, in a few of the last-named communities, 
(towards the close of the period,) this experiment continued down 
to i860. 

The comparative number of suicides in these two localities, as 
shown by the United States Census Reports for that year, was as 
follows. (See tables ante.) 



Maine Z to every 19,738 

New Hampshire 1 to every 10,518 

Vermont 1 to every 15,749 

Massachusetts 1 to every 11,191 

Connecticut 1 to every 16,433 

Khode Island 1 to every 12,472 

Aggregate 1 to every 13,285 



Maryland 1 to every 49,074 

Virginia 1 to every 53,210 

Delaware 1 to every 56,108 

Georgia 1 to every 48,058 

North Carolina 1 to every 66,074 

South Carolina 1 to every 87,963 

Aggregate 1 to every 56,584 



3<D " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

An analysis of these figures will show that in every solitary in- 
stance where the political State had controlled the education and 
training of children, the ratio of suicides ranged from 250 per cent, 
to 800 per cent, higher than where the education and training had 
been left to parental control, while the aggregate ratio shows over 
four times as many suicides under State education as under parental 
education. This enormous excess in the number of suicides amongst 
people educated under State control over that found amongst those 
educated under parental control must have a cause, and a cause 
adequate to the effect. Now, 

WHAT IS THE CAUSE ? 

In explanation of the facts shown by the foregoing statistics, we 
maintain that there are chiefly two causes, both of which are inti- 
mately connected, the one, in fact, springing from the other. The 
first cause which we propose to consider is the loss of parental au- 
thority and home influence over children, through and by means of 
a State-controlled system of education. The second cause, and one 
which, as just stated, is closely allied to the first, is a neglect of moral 
and religious education and training. 

It requires little argument to prove either to the readers of history, 
or to the close observer of current events, or to any affectionate son 
or daughter, who has grown to manhood or womanhood under the 
guardianship of an intelligent, affectionate, and conscientious father 
and mother, that parental influence is one of the Almighty's chief 
agencies for promoting the purity, preservation, and happiness of the 
human race. All history, all philosophy, and all poetry point to the 
home as the birthplace and nursery of virtue, morality, patriotism, 
and religion. Home is the ever-living fountain of present joys, 
sweet memories, and cherished hopes. Where is the little lad or 
lass whose heart does not gladden, whose eye does not brighten, and 
whose pace does not quicken while returning from field or forest or 
school, when nearing the loved spot which he or she calls by the 
sacred name of home ? What colors can paint, or what words de- 
scribe, the sweet pleasures of a truly happy home? 

What artist has ever yet delineated the matchless charms of the 
true conjugal and maternal love that beams in the eye, dimples the 
cheek, or quivers in the voice of the true wife and mother, radiating, 
illuminating, and cheering the home and sending sunshine and 
warmth, and life and hope and happiness into the hearts and 
souls of husband and sons and daughters and friends ? Or where 
on earth can there be found a truer picture of the primeval paradise 



Yet Another Startling Test. 31 

than in an intelligent, virtuous, orderly, affectionate, united, and 
happy family of father, mother, and children ? He who enjoys such 
a home, or the cheering hope of such a home, or even the bright 
and soothing memory of such a home, will find therein an ever- 
present talisman, an almost infallible shield against the horrible 
crime of self-destruction. Who, in his sane mind and sober senses, 
can ever seriously plot against his own life, however burdensome 
that life may have become, when remembering that in doing so he is 
plotting against the happiness of brothers and sisters to whom he is 
bound by the endearing ties of blood and ten thousand sweet memo- 
ries ; against an aged father and mother whom he loves, and by 
whom he is beloved with an ardor that knows no cooling ; against 
the devoted and faithful wife of his bosom, and against his own help- 
less, innocent, and confiding babes ? 

These considerations are, however, in one sense, only collateral 
barriers against the crime of self-murder, and, unless supported by 
higher and stronger motives, are liable to be battered down by the 
sui'ging billows of human passion, or to be crushed by the almost 
unbearable weight of worldly woes. 

But a deeper and stronger barrier against this black and horrid 
•crime is found in an educated conscience. 

In marshaling our proofs in support of this proposition, we shall 
assert : 

First, That man is a rational creature, and, being rational, what- 
ever he does while possessed of his reason he does for a motive. 
The motive may be a good one or it may be a bad one, but it is, 
nevertheless, a motive. 

Secondly, Above all other considerations personal to himself, man 
naturally hates misery and loves happiness. Hence, whatever he 
does or refuses to do while in the exercise of his reason, is done, or 
refused to be done, for the purpose of avoiding miser}- or of finding 
happiness. 

Thirdly. Men differ widely as to their choice of roads in the 
pursuit of happiness, as well as in their efforts to avoid misery ; 
and, 

Fourthly. There are chiefly three roads by which men travel in 
their pursuit of happiness or in their flight from misery, namely : ( 1 ) 
The road which leads to the gratification of the animal appetites, 
and which avoids whatever tends to their restraint ; (2) the road 
which leads to human applause and worldly honors, while keeping 
at a distance from whatever wounds pride or vanity ; (3) the road 
which leads to truth and justice ; to the triumph of God Almighty's 



32 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

law ; to honors imperishable ; and to happiness unmixed with pain 
and as enduring as eternity itself. Unlike the other roads, this 
turns neither to the right nor to the left ; neither to shun that which 
pains the body or mortifies vanity or pride. Its course is ever up- 
ward and onward. The truly faithful traveller upon this road, 
instead of repining at the endurance of bodily pain, the loss of for- 
tune, the betrayal of friends or the malice of enemies, seizes upon 
those passing woes as so many precious coins with which to pur- 
chase imperishable joys. 

Now, it requires but a moment's reflection to enable us to see 
that a man's choice, as between these three roads, must, in the na- 
ture of things, depend very much on his early training and educa- 
tion. 

Man has three classes of faculties, namely : the faculties of the 
body, the faculties of the mind, and the faculties of the conscience ; 
and, undoubtedly, all these three classes of faculties were designed 
by the Creator to be exercised, and to be exercised in harmony. 
But, in order to be exercised in harmony, it is necessary, in the na- 
ture of things, either that the demands of these three faculties be 
always in harmony, or else, in cases of conflict, one class of desires 
must yield obedience to another class. But it is easy to see that 
these three classes of desires are not always in harmony, for it often 
happens that one class of desires — as, for example, in the case of an 
inordinate desire for strong drink or impure pleasures — are directly 
at war both with the desires of the mind and the conscience, and it 
can scarcely require argument to prove that, in such cases of con- 
flict, the desires of the body ought to yield obedience to the opposing 
desires of mind and conscience. But then, again, the mind may, 
and often does, in defiance of conscience, at the peril of bodily health 
and life, and even at the hazard of disaster to itself, desire to circum- 
vent, overreach, defraud, and ruin others, and would, in its vaulting 
ambition, go so far as to usurp the throne of God Himself. Hence, 
in all cases of conflict between the unjust desires of mind and the 
dictates of conscience, the conscience should rule supreme. And, 
unless conscience do rule supreme, there is no adequate barrier to 
check the wrongs which the body and mind may perpetrate against 
themselves, against each other, against conscience, or against God 
and society. Hence, the true welfare, the safety and the happiness 
of every man's body, mind and conscience, as well as the safety of 
society, demand that every man's conscience should reign supreme 
over both his bodily appetites and his mental desires, aims, and 
ambitions. But all these three classes of man's faculties need edu- 



Tet Another Startling Test. 33 

cation, training, and exercise. The physical man needs education, 
training, and exercise, not only to give him bodily strength and 
skill, but to teach and accustom him to subject his animal appetites to 
the dictates of mind and conscience. The mind needs to be taught 
and trained and exercised, not only to strengthen and store it with 
knowledge necessary for the proper direction and government of the 
body, and the enlightenment of itself and of conscience by the lamp 
of reason, but to accustom it to habits of prompt and willing obe- 
dience to conscience. And the conscience needs to be educated, 
trained, and exercised, in order that it may learn and accustom itself 
to walk always in the path whither duty calls and to which right 
reason points, and never to allow either itself or its mind or its body 
to stray from that path. But, while it is true that the entire man, 
including body, mind, and conscience, requires education, training, 
and exercise, it is no less true that the conscience, the governing part 
of man, most of all requires this education, training, and exercise. 
If an individual in the private walks of life makes a mistake for 
the want of proper education or training, the evil consequences of 
such a mistake are usually unfelt by the general public, but if the 
governor of a State, or the President of the United States, for a 
similar reason, make a mistake in his official capacity, then the 
whole country must suffer the consequences. So, likewise, if, for 
the want of proper bodily training, a boy stumps his toe or cuts 
his finger, while his body must endure a temporary pain, yet his 
mind is not impaired nor his conscience tarnished. So, if for want 
of mental education, the boy should insist that the world is flat 
instead of round, or should prove himself so deficient in a knowl- 
edge of figures as to lose his situation, he might still escape the 
pangs of a guilty conscience and preserve a spotless reputation for 
integrity. But if, for the want of a conscience, educated, trained, 
exercised, and strengthened in habits of honesty, he should pocket 
his employer's money, in obedience to the demands of his animal 
appetite or to satisfy the claims of vanity, the whole man would 
suffer. For example : the conscience would suffer not only from re- 
morse, but it would suffer from being blunted and obscured, and 
rendered less fit to perform its functions ; the mind would suffer 
from anxiety and the fear of discovery, or from the mortification 
of detection ; and the body would suffer from the labor required 
to cover the tracks of guilt, or from being forced to endure the 
punishment which either the natural or the human law, or both, 
would visit upon it. Can it, then, be denied that the education, 
training, and constant exercise of the conscience is of the very 



34 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

first and greatest importance in giving direction and formation 
to the human character? Of course we are now addressing our- 
selves to those who recognize the existence of the human con- 
science as the great director and regulator of human motives and 
human actions. Ought, then, the consciences of children to be 
developed, instructed, and exercised as a part of their education? 
And ought this instruction and education to go hand in hand with 
the education and training of the mind and body during the hours 
of school ? 

It is maintained by multitudes of parents and many clergymen, 
while admitting that it is necessai-y that the consciences of children 
should be educated, that this education ought to be confined to the 
home circle and the church, and that the daily school should be 
exclusively reserved for the education of the mind and the body. 
But have we not seen that the conscience must be the governor 
and supreme ruler of the entire man ; that the conscience must be 
taught the habit of governing, and that both the mind and body 
must be taught habits of prompt and willing obedience? But if, 
throughout the live-long day, the conscience is to remain practically 
dormant, while the mind and body are both in the process of active 
development, what will be the necessary result? 

Is it not a universally admitted fact that every human organ, 
whether it be an organ of the body, the mind, or the conscience, is 
strengthened by exercise and weakened by disuse? Then, how is 
it possible that the conscience can maintain its supremacy over the 
mind and body if it is to be left sleeping or chained down in mute 
and motionless bondage, while the body and mind are daily grow- 
ing in strength, activity, and habits of insubordination? If, from 
the cradle to the grave, there is any one period of life more than 
any other when the conscience not only needs to be trained, but to 
be called into active service, it is during the time spent at school. 
It is then that pride and vanity, and anger and lust, and all the 
other passions that war against conscience are in their most active 
state of development ; and if, instead of training these growing pas- 
sions in habits of subjection to conscience, and instead of training 
the conscience to the habit of wielding its authority over these pas- 
sions, the passions, on the contrary, be trained to lord it over the con- 
science, what must be the natural result? When a child has reached 
manhood, with passions fully developed and trained to command, 
and a conscience dwarfed and enfeebled by disuse, and trained to 
habits of base and cowardly servitude, what power, short of a miracle, 
can sufficiently restore the lost energy of such a conscience or give it 



Tet Another Startling Test. 35 

the mastery over the entire man ? But when the conscience has lost 
her sceptre and become the slave of the mere animal or intellectual 
man, then such a man lives only for the present life, and looks not 
beyond the portals of the grave, either in his search for happiness or 
in his flight from pain. Such a man seeks happiness, chiefly, either 
in the gratification of his animal appetites, or in the acquisition of 
wealth, or in the paths of wordly ambition, marching to the music 
of human applause and grasping at the bubble of fame. So long as 
an average success continues to crown the efforts of one of these 
seekers after mere worldly happiness, the chances are that he will 
consent to live ; but let disaster overtake him, and what then? If a 
man of wealth, let fires, or floods, or a touch of hard times sweep away 
his accumulated millions ; if an over-ambitious man, let the last lin- 
gering hope of political preferment be blasted ; or if he be a man en- 
chained in the bondage of his unholy lusts, let even the crime-steeped 
partner of his debaucheries frown cruelly upon him, and what as- 
surance have we that he will not cut short the miserable existence 
that has ceased to yield pleasure and promises nothing but disap- 
pointment and pain ? 

The man who suffers from a raging tooth-ache is not censured for 
swallowing a small dose of laudanum in the hope of putting him- 
self to sleep until the period of pain shall have passed ; and if death 
were an eternal sleep and life promised nothing but pain, who could 
be censured if, to escape a life of suffering or shame, he should so 
enlarge his dose of laudanum as to render his sleep perpetual ? 

Here, then, in our humble opinion, is the true source of that 
alarming growth of suicides so prevalent in the United States. It 
is found in an educational system which has broken down parental 
authority, sundered the sacred bonds of affection that bound together 
brothers and sisters, parents and children, and which has weakened 
and almost obliterated the human conscience. 

It requires but a moment's reflection to show that the same causes 
which lead to the crime of suicide lead to every other crime known 
to the laws of God or man. Both reason and daily experience prove 
that the man or woman who has no sweet and endearing memories 
-of childhood's home ; who cherishes no love for father or mother or 
brother or sister ; and, worse still, the man or woman who believes 
in no God, no devil, no heaven, no hell, can never be trusted. Such 
a man may reach the very pinnacle of wealth and fame and political 
power ; he may be flattered and praised and applauded by the press 
and the people as the very pink of patriotism and honesty ; but let 
the day of trial of come ; let the voice of duty call to the right, while 



36 



Poison Drops " in the Federal Senate. 



his ruling passion for guilty pleasui-e, forbidden wealth, or crime- 
bought fame beckons to the left; and duty may call, and call, and 
call ; but, alas ! it will call in vain. 



CHAPTER Y. 

MR. WINES, SPECIAL CENSUS AGENT, ON THE FEARFUL INCREASE OF OUR 
INSANE, IDIOTIC, BLIND, AND DEAF-MUTES. 

Mr. Fred. H. Wines, Special Census Agent, in his preface to 
the statistics of crime, pauperism, insanity, etc., for 1880, presents 
the following synopsis of the number of the insane, idiots, blind, and 
deaf-mutes found in the United States during the years 1880, 1870, 
i860, and 1850, respectively, to wit: 



Class. 


18S0. 


1870. 


i860. 


1850. 




9i > 997 
76, 895 
48.928 
33,878 


37, 432 
24,527 
20, 320 
16, 205 


24, 042 
18,930 
12,658 
12,821 


15,610 
15, 787 
9,794 
9,803 




Blind 


Deaf-mutes 


Totals 


251,698 


98, 484 


68,451 


50,994 





As remarked by the Agent, the total population for each of these 
years was as follows, to wit : 

"In 1850 it was 23,191,876 ; 1111860,31,443,321; in 1S70, 38,55s, - 
371 ; and in 1880 it was 50,155,783. In other words, while the popu- 
lation has only a little more than doubled in thirty years, the number 
of defective persons returned is nearly five times as great as it was 
thirty years ago. 

" During the past decade (or since 1870) the increase in population 
has been thirty per cent.; but the apparent increase in the defective 
classes has been a little more than one hundred and fifty-five percent." 

As shown elsewhere, it is also painfully apparent that our crimi- 
nals have increased almost in the exact ratio with the increase of our 
insane, idiotic, and other defective classes. 

In commenting on the astounding growth of crime, insanity, pau- 
perism, etc., in the United States during the last thirty years, the 
Special Agent says : 



Mr. Wines, Special Census Agent. 37 

" The interest and importance of the inquiry into the number and 
condition of the defective classes, and of the criminal and pauper 
population, arises from the fact that these are burdens to be borne — 
drains upon the vitality of the community. When we consider the 
growth of our population and our material resoui-ces, we are in 
danger of forgetting that there is another side to the picture. It 
is startling to know that of 50,000,000 of inhabitants over 400,- 
000 are either insane, idiots, deaf-mutes, or blind, or inmates of 
prisons, reformatories, or poor-houses. If to these we add the out- 
door poor and the inmates of private charitable institutions, the num- 
ber will swell to nearly or quite half a million, or one per cent, of the 
total population." 

We italicize and fully indorse the closing words of the Agent, in 
which he says : 

" We cannot begin too soon or proseczite too vigorously the in- 
quiry into the causes of the prevalence of these evils, which are 
like a canker at the heart of all our prosperity. Nothing can be 
more important than for us to ascertain, at the earliest possible 
moment, the rate at which they are increasing and the means of 
arresting their growth. 

" The subject is obscure," says the Agent, " but in the study of 
it we may almost be said to have our finger upon the pulse of the 
nation.'''' 

While, as suggested, we fully indorse the said italicized words, 
we are not entirely disposed to indorse the declaration that the sub- 
ject is an " obscure" one, especially to those who will carefully ex- 
amine the statistics embodied in his report, and study them by the 
light of a few common-sense principles. 

If it is true that a child brought up in the way he should go will 
not depart from it when he is old, who will venture to deny that 
there has been something radically wrong in the bringing up of a 
generation which so readily and so rapidly betakes itself to the paths 
of crime, or which, either ignorantly or otherwise, brings upon itself 
the constantly increasing maladies of idiocy, insanity, and kindred 
evils ? 

In 1880 our public-school property was valued at $211,411,540. 
Our receipts during that one year for public-school purposes reached 
the enormous sum of $96,857,534. There were gathered into our 
public schools 9,946,160 children, and out of our public-school treas- 
ury we were paying $55,745,029, in the way of salaries, to some 
236,019 public-school teachers, in order to prevent crime and save 
the expenses of paying peace-officers and building city prisons, 
county jails, and State penitentiaries. And behold the result ! ! 

Our towns and cities swarm with policemen ; our prisons, work- 



38 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

houses, and reformatories are crowded almost to suffocation with 
impecunious thieves, robbers, and cut-throats, while gilded crime 
goes unpunished, and moneyed malefactors without number strut 
our streets with heads erect, spit upon the law, laugh justice to 
scorn, and fatten upon their ill-gotten millions, while multitudes 
of their wronged and ruined victims are lodged in almshouses and 
lunatic asylums, or seek refuge from so sad a fate in the still more 
horrid doom of self-destruction. 



CHAPTER VI. 

POLITICAL POISON IN THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL BOOKS— TEN MILLIONS OF AMER- 
ICAN CHILDREN FORCED TO DRINK DAILY THE DEADLY DOCTRINE OF 
CENTRALIZATION AND DESPOTISM ! ! ! 

From a Speech by the Author, delivered at San Diego, Cal., Oct. 30, 1884. 

In our California public schools, as in those of most of the other 
States, Webster's Dictionary is the legally established authority for 
the definition of words. This would all be well enough if the 
Webster of to-day were the Webster of twenty-five years ago. But 
the illustrious and patriotic Noah Webster would blush in his grave 
at the thought of being made to father the bastard brood of political 
heresies which are now being taught in our public schools, through 
the medium of a false, forged, and mutilated dictionaiy bearing his- 
honored name. 

To show how the overthrow of constitutional liberty and the 
inestimable right of democratic self-government ai - e being brought 
about by changing the meaning of words, a few examples will 
suffice. 

Take for example the word "Constitution." "Webster's Una- 
bridged Dictionary," as published in 1859, in giving the legal defi- 
nition of the word " Constitution," says : 

" In free States the Const ittition is paramount to the statutes 
or laws enacted by the Legislature, limiting and controlling its 
power ; and in the United States the Legislattire is created and 
its powers designated by the Constitution." 

But every word of the above definition is expunged from the 
Webster now used and required by law to be used in our public 
schools, and in its place we find the following definition of the word 
" Constitution," to wit: 



Political Poison in the Public- School Books. 39 

' ' The principal or fundamental laxvs which govern a State or 
other organized, body of men, and are embodied in written docu- 
ments or implied in the institutions or usages of the cozmtry or 
society.'" 

Thus, under public-school tuition, the rising generation no longer 
look upon the written Constitution as the source and limit of legis- 
lative power; but on the contrary the mere " usages of society" 
are raised to the dignity of constitutional law. 

What a very convenient way of clothing official villainy in the 
garb of constitutional authority ! After our corrupt and perjured 
officials have violated, in a hundred ways, the Constitution they 
had solemnly sworn to support in order to carry out their nefarious 
schemes of fraud and plunder, how would it have been possible 
for them to have contrived a more ingenious device to justify in the 
eyes of the rising generation their official misdeeds, than by thus 
adopting, legalizing, and forcing into the public school, through 
their willing tools, a definition of the word " Constitution" suffi- 
ciently elastic to cover every species of their accustomed rascalities ? 

Again ! The old Noah Webster of twenty-five years ago, in giving 
to the word "Union" its political signification, defines it as 
" States united. Thus the United States of America are 
sometimes called the union." 

But in the false and mutilated Webster which the public-school 
system now forces our children to study this definition is entirely 
suppressed, and in its place we have the word " Union" defined 
as meaning — 

"A CONSOLIDATED BODY, AS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

are often called the ' Union.' " Thus, while the real statesmen 
of both political parties are warning the people against the danger 
of a consolidated government, the children, who are soon to take the 
places of these statesmen, through our public-school machinery are 
indoctrinated with the idea that we already have a consolidated 
republic. In the case of McCollough vs. The State of Maryland, 
Chief- Justice Marshall, of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
said: "No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of 
breaking down the lines which separate the States and of compound- 
ing the American people into a solid mass." 

But what no political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of 
in Judge Marshall's time is now taught as an accomplished fact. 

Again, " Webster's Dictionary" twenty-five years ago defined the 
word " Federal " as — 

" Consisting in a compact between parties, particularly 



40 " Poiso?i Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

AND CHIEFLY BETWEEN STATES AND NATIONS FORMED ON ALLI- 
ANCE BY CONTRACT OR MUTUAL AGREEMENT, AS A FEDERAL GOV- 
ERNMENT, SUCH AS THAT OF THE UNITED STATES." But the 

present public-school Webster, after expunging every syllable of 
this definition, defines " Federal " as being " specifically composed 
of States, and which retain only a subordinate and limited sover- 
eignty, as the Union of the United States and the Sonderbund of 
Switzerland." 

A moment's reflection will show that under such a definition of 
the word " Federal," the several States composing the American 
Union would have no rights and no sovereignty which the General 
Government would be bound to respect. 

Now it is undoubtedly true that in all those matters in which, 
under the Constitution, the Federal Government has been clothed 
with sovereign authority, the authority of the States is subordinate 
to the Federal Government. But in all things else the sovereignty 
of the States is as supreme and as independent of the Federal sov- 
ereignty as if the Federal sovereignty had never existed. 

In the celebrated Dred Scott case the United States Supreme 
Court said : 

" The principles upon which our Governments rest, and upon 
which alone they continue to exist, is the union of States, sovereign 
and independent within their own limits, in their internal and 
domestic concerns." 

But if, as now taught in the public schools of California and else- 
where, the States have no sovereignty except such as is subordinate 
to the sovereignty of the United States, what becomes of our sover- 
eign right to local self-government? Suppose that the Federal 
Government should to-morrow, in the exercise of its supposed supe- 
rior sovereignty, undertake to nullify our State Constitution and 
laws, abrogate our State Government, remove from office our 
Governor, abolish our State Courts and our legislature, and force 
us to accept for our local government just such laws as the Federal 
Congress might choose to give us, such State, county, and municipal 
officers as the President might send to rule over us, what remedy 
would we have ? Shall I be told that such action on the part of the 
Federal Government, clashing, as it would, with the principles of 
State sovereignty, would not be tolerated? 

But I would answer, if a State possesses no sovereignty except 
such as is suboi-dinate to the sovereignty of the Federal Govern- 
ment, would not our subordinate sovereignty be forced to yield to 
the superior sovereignty to which it is subordinate? Is it not a law 



Political Poison in the Public- School Books. 41 

of nature that whenever two unequal forces meet, the inferior must 
yield to the superior? 

My countrymen, disguise the fact as we may, there is in this 
country to-day, and in both the political parties, an element which 
is ripe for a centralized despotism. There are men and corporations 
of vast wealth, whose iron grasp spans this whole continent, and 
who find it more difficult and more expensive to corrupt thirty odd 
State Legislatures than one Federal Congress. It was said of Nero 
of old that he wished the Roman people had but one head, so that 
he might cut it off at a single blow. And so it is with those 
moneyed kings who would rule this country through bribery, fraud, 
and intimidation. 

It is easy to see how, with all the powers of government centered 
at Washington in one Federal head, they could at a single stroke put 
an end to American liberty. 

But they well understand that before striking this blow the minds 
of the people must be prepared to receive it. And what surer or safer 
preparation could possibly be made than is now being made, by in- 
doctrinating the minds of the rising generation with the idea that ours 
is already a consolidated government ; that the States of the Union 
have no sovereignty which is not subordinate to the will and pleasure 
of the Federal head, and that our Constitution is the mere creature of 
custom, and may therefore be legally altered or abolished by custom? 

Such are a few of the pernicious and poisonous doctrines which 
ten millions of American children are to-day drinking in with the 
very definitions of the words they are compelled to study. And yet 
the man who dares to utter a word of warning of the approaching 
danger is stigmatized as an enemy to education and unfit to be men- 
tioned as a candidate for the humblest office. 

Be it so. Viewing this great question as I do, not for all the offices 
in the gift of the American people would I shrink from an open 
and candid avowal of my sentiments. If I have learned anything 
from the reading of history, it is that the man who, in violation of great 
principles, toils for temporary fame, purchases for himself either total 
oblivion or eternal infamy, while he who temporarily goes down 
battling for right principles always deserves, and generally secures, 
the gratitude of succeeding ages, and will carry with him the sustain- 
ing solace of a clean conscience, more precious than all the offices 
and honors in the gift of man. 

History tells us that Aristides was voted into banishment because 
he was just. Yet who would not a thousand times rather to-day be 
Aristides than be numbered amongst the proudest of his persecutors ? 



zj.2 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

Socrates, too, in violation of every principle of justice, was con- 
demned to a dungeon and to death. Yet what name is moie honored 
in history than his? And which of his unjust judges would not 
gladly, hide himself in the utter darkness of oblivion from the with- 
ering scorn and contempt of all mankind ? 

From the noble example of Aristides and of Socrates let American 
statesmen learn wisdom, and from the undying infamy of their cow- 
ardly time-serving persecutors let political demagogues of to-day take 
warning. 



CHAPTEK VII. 

MISTAKES OF CATHOLICS IN DEALING WITH THE SCHOOL QUESTION. 

The New Tork Catholic Review of November 26th, 1881, pub- 
lished an able article on the educational question, taken from The 
Boston fournal of Education, and in commenting on the same, 
our Catholic contemporary among other things said : 

'"''Let it always be borne in mind that we are in favor of free 
schools, provided they be fair" 

This, of coui'se, is an entirely safe proposition as stated, because 
everybody is supposed to be in favor of whatever is fair, as he 
understands the meaning of the word fair. But we are left in 
doubt as to what kind of free schools our esteemed contemporary 
would consider fair. 

Suppose, for example, that all our public schools were such that 
every child in the land could be educated therein, without any 
danger either to its health, its life, its morals, or its religion. In 
other words, suppose that the public-school system were otherwise 
perfect, would it be fair to make them free for all, and would the 
editor of the Reviexv be in favor of making them free for the chil- 
dren of the rich as well as those of the poor? If he would, then 
we should like to have him answer one or two other questions, 
namely : Does not every parent, by virtue of assuming the duties 
of the parental office, become bound by the natural law to feed and 
clothe and educate his children ? In other words, is not the educa- 
tion of one's own children a just debt which, if able, he is morally 
bound to pay ? And if a proper education is a debt which every 
parent, according to his ability, owes to his own children, upon 



Mistakes of Catholics in Dealing with the School Question. 43 

what principle of fairness or justice can the State take one man's 
money with which to pay the debt of another ? 

Again, if feeding, clothing, and educating one's own children 
are all parental obligations with exactly the same origin, standing 
upon precisely the same moral footing, and having identically the 
same binding force, then has not the State the very same right 
to feed and clothe that it has to educate, at public expense, the 
children of parents who are abundantly able to discharge these 
obligations ? And if it is just and fair to raise by general taxation 
a common fund for the feeding, clothing, and educating of all the 
children in the country, why is it not equally just and fair to extend 
the same principle still further, by compelling all to contribute to 
a common fund for the purpose of feeding and clothing everybody 
else, as well as everybody's children? 

Again, is it fair that the poor old man and his decrepit wife, 
whom God has never blessed with children, but who have to labor 
hard sixteen hours a day, the former with his solitary horse and 
cart, and the latter over her wash-tub, in order to keep soul and 
body together, should be taxed to help educate the children of the 
millionaire, who lives in all the splendor of a prince? In other 
words, would it have been fair to levy upon the rags of Lazarus a 
tax to pay for educating the children of Dives? 

We do not now propose to discuss these questions, but shall await 
the answers thereto by the learned editor of the Catholic Review, 
and we hope that when we understand each other we shall both be 
on the same side. 

In commenting on the article quoted from the Boston fournal of 
Education, the editor of the Catholic Review, while referring to 
our present public-school system, remarks : "Instead of being a 
bulwark, it is really a very great danger, as people, now that Cath- 
olics have left off making so much noise about the matter, begin 
to see for themselves" 

The intimation which seems to be conveyed by this remark is that 
agitation of the school question by Catholics necessarily tends to pre- 
vent non-Catholics from seeing or acknowledging the evils of the 
system. That there are some people so blinded by their antipathy 
to Roman Catholicism that they would not accept any truth upon 
Catholic authority we do not doubt, but that the great body of non- 
Catholic Americans are the victims of so blind a bigotry we do not 
believe, and our convictions are based upon some years of contact 
with people of all shades of religious and non-religious belief, from 
the strict followers of Knox and Calvin to the disciples of Thomas 



44 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

Paine. That there is a very general disposition amongst non-Cath- 
olics to distrust the motives of Catholics when agitating this school 
question is undoubtedly true, but for this distrust we hold that 
Catholics are themselves very largely responsible. The great evils of 
the public-school system are such as affect not Catholics alone, but 
which strike at the authority of every parent, and imperil the wel- 
fare, the honor, and the happiness of every family, and consequently 
any movement against this common foe should from the start have 
been in the name and on the behalf of the whole people, and not for 
the benefit of only a small fraction of the people. 

When the municipal authorities of New York City, more than forty 
years ago, were appealed to for relief against the unjust exactions and 
cruel oppressions of this monstrous system, that appeal, as it seems 
to us, ought to have been in the name of the people of that city, and 
for the benefit of the whole people ; but instead of that, the petition 
prepared by, or under the aspices of, the illustrious Archbishop 
Hughes, which was expected to result in securing their educational 
rights to a small portion of the inhabitants of that great metropolis, 
was headed thus : 

" To the Honorable the Board of Alder?nen 

of the City of New York : 
" The Petition of the Catholics of New York Respect- 
fully Represents," &c. 

The petition then goes on to enumerate the hardships and injustices 
which Catholics were suffering from this system, seemingly taking 
it for granted that it was good enough for the rest of mankind. 

To this it may be answered that Catholics had some grievances 
to complain of under the system which non-Catholics had not. This 
may be very true, but then it is equalty true that underlying the whole 
system was a fundamental wrong which was sapping the foundation 
of family government, and poisoning the very sources of all domes- 
tic happiness, and threatening the downfall and ruin of all civil gov- 
ernment and of social order itself. Under these circumstances it was 
seemingly as illy-advised a movement for Catholics to make an isolated 
attack upon the system, upon the sole ground of its antagonism 
to their faith, as it would have been in revolutionary times for the 
Catholics of old Maryland to have declared war against Great Britain 
upon the sole ground that she was a Protestant power and imposed 
unjust burdens upon the Catholics of that colon}'. Had the Catholics 
of those days raised such an issue as that, and insisted upon their 
non-Catholic neighbors aiding them in fighting their battles upon 



Mistakes of Catholics in Dealing ivith the School Question. 45 

such purely Roman Catholic grounds, instead of planting themselves 
upon the broad principles of human liberty, which were admittedly 
as dear to the Virginia Episcopalians and New England Puritans as 
to themselves, how many recruits outside of their own borders would 
they have been able to raise for such a war ? Here then, we believe, 
was the first fatal mistake that the Catholics of this country fell into 
in fighting the school question, namely, the making of it a Roman 
Catholic question instead of a parental one. And from that day to 
this a similar blunder has been periodically perpetrated — only on a 
smaller scale — in various parts of the country, invariably resulting 
in widening the breach between Catholics and non-Catholics on this 
educational question. Another serious blunder — to call it by no 
harsher name — which many of our Catholics appear to us to have 
made, is the keeping up of a terrible cry about the Godless public 
schools, and the injustice of forcing Catholics to pay for their sup- 
port, whenever they are denied a share in the filthy lucre which pays 
the price of running the institution ; and then subsiding into the 
utmost docility, and becoming perfectly reconciled to this demon of 
iniquity the moment they are allowed to pocket the price of the inno- 
cent souls which it sends to destruction. 

It is evident that one great reason why this class of Catholics — if 
they can be called such — have made so little impression upon the 
non-Catholic mind by the " noise" they have made about the public- 
school system was because their course of conduct has not harmo- 
nized with their words. 

Still another reason is, that there has not been, and is not now, 
any proper harmony between Catholics themselves. We find priest 
disagreeing with priest, and layman disagreeing with layman on 
this vital question. All this appears to us to arise from the fact of 
ignoring the great and fundamental principles of the natural law 
which makes it the right and the duty of fathers and mothers, of all 
creeds and of no creed, to direct and control the education of their 
own children according to the dictates of their own consciences 
This is a principle which is dear not only to the Catholic, but to the 
Protestant, the Jew, and the infidel. It is upon this platform that 
many of our best and ablest California minds, of all classes of re- 
ligionists and non-religionists, are beginning to take their stand. 
And we do but simple justice when we say that, as a general rule, 
we have found Protestants and other non-Catholics as ready, and 
oftentimes far more ready, to take their stand with us upon this plat- 
form than were many of our co-religionists. If we Catholics would 
make sure of non-Catholic assistance in our efforts to reform our 



46 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

public-school system, we must first make sure that we. ourselves, 
are on the right road to such reform, and that our platform of prin- 
ciples is not only right, but broad enough to afford standing room for 
all child-loving parents, however widely they may differ from us on 
religious questions. But if Catholics themselves proclaim false 
principles, they ought not to find followers. That some very emi- 
nent Catholics have, from time to time, undertaken to maintain very 
erroneous theories touching this educational question seems to us 
undeniable. For example, we now have before us a book published 
in 1876 by the Catholic Publication Society of New York, entitled 
" Catholics and Education" apparently intended to set forth the 
position occupied by Catholics on the much vexed school question. 
The book is made up of articles written by eminent Catholics, and 
originally published in the Catholic World. The following lines 
from the preface explain the object of this publication : 

" The desire to understand the position of Catholics on this sub- 
ject is wide-spread, and there is a demand among Catholics them- 
selves for more abundant information. These considerations have 
induced the editor of the Catholic World to reprint the following 
series of articles from the pages of that magazine." 

One of these articles, which is thus given to the world as an ex- 
planation of " the position of Catholics on this subject," at page 92 
contains the following : 

" We are decidedly in favor of free public schools for all the 
children of the land, and we hold that the property of the State 
should educate the children of the State." 

Now for one, we most solemnly protest against the soundness of 
this so-called Catholic position on the school question. We main- 
tain that it is both Communistic and Pagan. We utterly deny that 
the State has any children. It is true that, by a fiction of the law in 
use in England, bastard children are sometimes called the children 
of the people. And if the writer of the article from which the 
above extract is taken intends to say that the property of the State 
should bear this burden of educating the State's bastard children, 
we shall urge no particular objection ; but then the question arises, 
What is the property of the State? Surely it is not the property of 
the private citizen. If the State owns all the property which we 
have heretofore supposed belonged to individual citizens, the reign 
of Communism has already begun. If, as seems to be claimed, the 
State owns all the children and all the property too, we can see no 
good reason why she may not, and ought not, in common fairness, 



Roman Pontiff's on Parental Rights of non- Catholics. 47 

to make an equal distribution of her own property amongst her own 
children. After all, this is the true theory upon which rests this 
Communistic system of public schools. 

On page 94, in the course of the same article just quoted, after 
advocating a general division of the public school money, among 
such religious denominations as might desire such division, the 
writer goes on to say : " But we are asked what shall be done with 
the large body of citizens who are neither Catholic nor Protestant ? 
Such citizens, we reply, have no religion ; and they who have no 
religion have no conscience that people who have religion are bound 
to respect. If they refuse to send their children either to Hebrew 
schools, or the Catholic schools, or, in fine, to the Protestant schools, 
let them found schools of their own at their own expense." 

In other words, let us of the various churches — Catholics, Protest- 
ants, and Jews — combine our forces and inflict upon all who can not 
honestly and will not hypocritally join some church exactly the 
same kind of wrong under which we ourselves have been groaning 
for a long series of years. 

If the editor of the Catholic Review refers to noises like these, 
we fully concur with him in his intimation that such ' ' noises " were 
well calculated to prevent other people from perceiving the evil 
results of our public schools. But if Catholics will wisely maintain 
the great principles of human liberty and equal parental rights with- 
out regard to differences upon questions concerning either politics or 
religion, there is no danger but that they will find a ready and cor- 
dial response on the part of intelligent and honest people, whether 
they belong to any church organization or not. 



CHAPTER Vin. 

THE ROMAN PONTIFFS ON THE PARENTAL RIGHTS OF NON-CATHOLICS — THE 
EQUAL RIGHTS OF CATHOLICS, PROTESTANTS, JEWS, AND PAGANS UPHELD. 

The following extract from a sermon of Right Rev. Bishop 
Cameron, delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of a new con- 
vent at Sidney, is copied from the Cleveland Catholic Universe of 
November 6th, 1884. 

In defining the position of the church on this question of parental 
rights in educational matters, the learned Bishop says: 



48 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

" Her principle and practice in this matter were admirably illus- 
trated in the thirteenth century, when the Popes were in the very 
zenith of their temporal power and influence, and Innocent III ruled 
the world from the Chair of Peter. Certain zealots proposed that 
the infant children of Jews and Mahometans should be forcibly taken 
away from their parents, baptized and educated as Catholics. How 
was the proposal met? St. Thomas Aquinas, the prince of theolo- 
gians, repudiated it as a wicked innovation. 

" He urged that such was not the usage of the Catholic Church ; 
that there had been powerful Catholic sovereigns, the Con- 
stantines and Theodosii, who had many saintly and enlightened 
prelates, like Saints Sylvester and Ambrose, to advise them, and 
that such faithful bishops would not have neglected to recommend 
the proposed plan, had it been conformable to reason. He further 
proved that it was repugnant to natural justice, nature having 
made the child a thing belonging to the father, the author of 
its being, and that child, therefore, ought to remain under the 
parents' care and control until it should attain to the use of 
reason. Hence, it would be manifest injustice to withdraw the 
child in the meantime from the parents, or to do anything to it 
against the parents' will ; but when the young person has attained 
the use of his free will, he is then his own, sui juris, and is to be 
led to the church, not by violence, but by persuasion, (212, q. 10, 
a. 12). Such was the unanswerable logic with which ' the Angel 
of the Schools,' the wonder of all ages and the admiration of his 
own, utterly discredited the proposed encroachment on parental 
rights, and upheld their inviolable sacredness, 

***** * * 

" In the best period of Roman society we are told that ' the State 
presumed not to pass the threshold of the Roman father ' with any 
educational code in hand, though it did, at a later and worse period, 
attempt to enforce the tyrannous and novel system imported from 
captive Greece, which gradually changed and disfigured the fair 
face of Roman life. But hostile as was the Roman Empire before 
its conversion to Christianity, it did not seek to educate the children 
of Catholics in Paganism, or to prevent Catholic parents from bring- 
ing up their children in their own religion. Even when Julian the 
Apostate closed the imperial schools to Christian teachers, and for- 
bade Christians to study the Pagan classics and philosophy, he never 
encouraged the kidnapping of Christian children and the educating 
of them in the religion of the State. This is a refinement which 
exclusively belongs to modern secularism, utterly at variance both 
with Christian tradition and with the sacredness and inviolability 
of parental authority. Representing the temporal order, the State, 
whether Pagan or Christian, has the right to look after the material 
wants and interests of society, not after men's minds, ideas, intelli- 
gence, motives, and consciences. The Christian State is bound to 
use its own powers according to the Christian law, but the Christian 
law gives it no additional power whatever. All the power it has 
is the power belonging to all States, whether Pagan or Mahometan. 



Roman Pontiffs on Parental Rights of non- Catholics. 49 

A Pagan pi'ince loses no right by his baptism, neither does he gain 
any new right by it over his subjects. As well, then, might you 
hold that Nero, Diocletian, or Julian the Apostate, had a right to 
educate their Christian subjects in the enormities of heathenism, as 
to maintain that the civil power has now the right to trample on the 
inalienable right of parents to educate their own offspring as their 
conscience may dictate. The State, therefore, can interfere in edu- 
cation only as a helper of those naturally charged with the education 
of the young ; consequently its first duty, in a community of mixed 
religions, is that of strict impartiality with regard to the various 
churches. To employ its educational machinery to protestantize the 
Catholic, or to catholicize Protestant children, or to sap the religious 
faith of either, would be an intolerable usurpation and injustice. 
Such a course of proceeding would, instead of helping, hinder 
parents from educating their children according to their conscientious 
convictions. No ; it can never be too often repeated that the State 
has no right to educate or to control education. For Christian 
States, as States, are not different from Pagan States, both having 
the same end and the same matter for their jurisdiction ; and who 
will presume to say that the Pagan State ever had the right to con- 
trol and direct the education of its Christian subjects? Who will 
presume to say that it had or has the right to mould Christians' 
minds, to discipline their understandings, to control their wills, to 
direct the whole man, and to fashion him after its own prejudices 
into a so-called good citizen?" 

As a most admirable supplement to Right Rev. Bishop Cameron's 
sermon on parental rights, it affords us great pleasure to be able to 
present herewith an extract from a letter just received from Right 
Rev. E. O. Connell, of Marysville, California. The letter was 
written from Baltimore during the late session of the plenary coun- 
cil, and bears date Nov. 27, 1884. The Right Rev. Bishop says : 

" My Dear Mr. Montgomery : Some time ago I promised to 
furnish you with the exact words of the Pope forbidding the least 
pressure to be put upon jwTz-Catholic children attending Catholic 
schools. But 'tis not till now that I was able to find the precise 
words, viz : 

" ' We forbid non-Catholic pupils attending Catholic schools to 
be obliged to assist at Mass or other religious exercises. Let them 
be left to their own discretion.' Instruction of the Sacred Congre- 
gation of Propaganda Fide, 25th April, 1868, transmitted to all 
the Catholic bishops of North America." 

These are potent utterances in behalf of liberty, which speak for 
themselves. 

It is our firm belief, founded both on reason and personal experi- 
ence, that if all our American Catholics, bishops, priests, and 
people, instead of clamoring for special school laws intended for 



5o " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

their own exclusive benefit, would boldly and persistently proclaim 
to the world these broad and universal principles of parental libertv 
as the inalienable heritage of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Mahom- 
etans, and Free-thinkers, they would soon find their voices heard 
and their ranks — as the friends of educational reform — swollen bv 
tens of millions of those who are to-day numbered with their bitterest 
opponents. 



CHAPTER IX. 

SPECIFICATION OF FATAL ERRORS INHERENT IN THE NEW ENGLAND SCHOOL 
SYSTEM. 

Every standard writer on the subject of either law or morals pro- 
claims with one voice that parents are bound by the natural law to 
feed, clothe, and edticate their own children. Bouvier says : "The 
" principal obligations which parents owe their children are their 
" maintenance, their protection, and their education." 1 Chancellor 
Kent says : " The duties of parents to their children, as being their 
" natural guardians, consist in maintaining and educating them 
" during their season of infancy and youth." 2 

Sir William Blackstone says : " The last duty of parents to their 
" children is that of giving them an educatioit suitable to their sta- 
" tion in life ; a duty pointed out by reason, and of far the greatest 
" importance of any. For," continues that author, "as Puffendorf 
" very well observes, ' it is not easy to imagine or allow that a pa- 
" ' rent has conferred any considerable benefit upon his child by 
" ' bringing him into the world if he afterwards entirely neglects 
" ' his culture and education, and suffers him to grow up like a 
" ' mere beast, to lead a life useless to others and shameful to him- 
" ' self.' " 3 Dr. Wayland, in his Elements of Moral Science, says: 
" The duty of parents is generally to educate or to bring up their 
" children in such manner as they believe will be most for their 
"future happiness, both temporal and eternal." 4 Again: "He 
" (the parent) is bound to inform himself of the peculiar habits 
" and reflect upon the probable future situation of his child, and 
" deliberately to consider ivhat sort of education will most con- 
" duce to his future happiness and usefulness." 5 Again: "The 

1 Bouvier's Institutes, vol. 2, p. 118. - 2 Kent, 196. 

3 Cooley's Blackstone, vol. 1, p. 449. 

* Wayland's Elements of Moral Science, 314. 

6 Wayland's Moral Science, 316. 



Fatal Errors Inherent in New England System. 51 

•" duties of a parent are established by God, and God requires us 
•" not to violate them." 1 According to the laws of nature, says 
Wayland, "the teacher is only the agent; the parent is the prin- 
*' cipal." 3 But, under the New England system, as by law estab- 
lished, the parent is not recognized as the principal, nor is the 
teacher regarded as his agent. The Legislatm-e of California has 
gone so far towards elevating the teacher above the parents as to 
make it a penal offence for any parent to even insult the teacher 
of a public school in the presence of his pupils, no difference what 
the provocation may be. 

Section 654 of the Penal Code of this State reads: " Every pa- 
" rent, guardian, or other person, who upbraids, insults, or abuses 
" any teacher of the public schools, in the presence or hearing of a 
" pupil thereof, is guilty of a misdemeanor." 

If the teacher insults the parent, in the presence of his children, 
there is no penalty to pay, or if the dirtiest loafer in the land insults 
the teacher of a private school, without the least cause or provoca- 
tion, that is all right ; but woe be to the father or mother who has 
the temerity to breathe one offensive word against the teacher of a 
public school, in the hearing of his pupils, even should it be to chide 
him for his immoral conduct towards the child of the offender. 

In his biennial report for 1864, our State Superintendent of Pub- 
lic Instruction — quoting from the judicial decisions of some of the 
Eastern States, construing their public-school laws, which are in 
.all respects similar to our own — maintains the proposition that 
*' the child should be taught to consider his instructor, in many 
" respects, superior to the parent in poitit of authority" and 
" that the viclgar impression that parents have a legal right 
" to dictate to teachers, is entirely erroneous," and, further, that 
" parents have no remedy as against the teacher " z In the State 
of Vermont, in 1874, a School Committee expelled from a public 
school certain children because of their absence from school on a 
religious holiday, although they had remained absent in obedience 
to the commands of their parents ; and this, too, was after the school 
authorities had been appealed to in vain for leave of absence. This 
action of the School Committee was afterwards sustained by the Su- 
preme Court of the State, which based its decision, in part, at least, 
on the ground that " no Divine authority had been quoted or as- 
" serted" to sustain the right claimed by these parents. 4 

1 Wayland, 321. 

2 Wayland, 316. 

s See Superintendent Swett's Biennial Keport for 1864, pp. 164-5-6, and Judicial Decisions there 

oted. 

'Ferriter vs. Tyler, 48 Vt., 444. 



5 2 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

Thus the law of nature and nature's God, which ordains that it is 
both the right and duty of parents to educate their children " in suck 
' ' mariner as they believe will be most for their future happiness " is 
utterly disregarded and set at naught by the State, which ordains that 
it is neither the right nor the duty of parents, but of the State, to say 
when, where, by whom, and in what manner our children shall be 
educated. 

Now, it is always possible for either individuals or States to dis- 
regard and to violate nature's laws, but it is not possible to do so 
without suffering, sooner or later, a penalty, and a penalty, too, 
corresponding in magnitude with the importance of the law vio- 
lated. Hence it is — and we assert it without the fear of successful 
contradiction — that those communities, which have so long and so 
glaringly violated nature's laws in the matter of education, are now 
reaping so heavy and so deadly a harvest of crime, pauperism, in- 
sanity, and suicides. 

Dr. Wayland has well said " that the relaxation of parental au- 
" thority has always been found one of the surest indications of the 
" decline of social order and the unfailing precursor of public tur- 
" bulence and anarchy. " ] Now, under the law, as we hare already 
seen, parental authority is not merely relaxed, but it is utterly set at 
defiance. What, we would ask, does parental authority amount to, 
in the matter of educating children, when a parent is not recognized 
as having any l ' remedy, as against the teacher" for the wrongs 
he may perpetrate against his child, and when, as in California to- 
day, the parent is, in the eye of the law, a criminal who ventures 
to send his own child to a school of his own choice, and at his own 
expense, without first going with his hat under his arm to a board 
of petty officials to beg their permission so to do ? 

If parents, any longer, have the least vestige of authority over the 
all-important matter of their own children's education, which is not 
wholly subordinated to the private interests, prejudices, and petty 
spites of any and every little conclave of irresponsible upstarts who r 
by hook or by crook, can so manage on election day as to have their 
names on the tickets of the winning party, we should feel under 
many obligations if somebody would inform us what that remaining 
parental authority is, or where it is to be found. 

Is it not the almost unanimous cry, on the part of parents, through- 
out the length and breadth of the land, that they can neither com- 
mand the respect nor obedience of their children, and are not our 

1 Wayland's Elements of Moral Science, p. 313. 



Fatal Errors Inherent in New England System. 53 

police courts crowded, and our county prisons and State peniten- 
tiaries being filled with beardless boys, many of whom have had 
comfortable homes, and have grown up in the society of respectable 
parents, but never under their control? 

But, perhaps, we shall be asked, why is it that neither politicians 
nor the parents of children have thus far done anything towards 
furnishing a remedy for all these crying evils? 

We answer, the reasons are numerous ; but the first and most 
important reason we shall assign, is ignoraizce: ignorance of the 
true and Heaven-ordained relations between parent and child ; igno- 
rance of the reciprocal duties which they respectively owe to each 
other ; yes, and ignorance — total ignorance — of the foregoing, terri- 
ble facts, so clearly revealed by the United States Census Reports. 

Let any one who doubts the general ignorance of our people, on 
this last subject, test the matter, by catechising the first ten men he 
meets concerning the facts shown by our published tables. The 
truth is, that the advocates of this New England system have been so 
long, so loud, and so persistent in proclaiming to the world its sup- 
posed excellencies that nine-tenths of the world have, without the 
least investigation, concluded to accept it for all that its most enthu- 
siastic admirers represent it to be. Were it not for the widespread 
and almost total ignorance on the part of parents, as regards the 
poisonous and deadly fruits which they and their children, and 
society at large, are daily reaping from this anti-parental system of 
education, it could not survive a single month in its present shape. 
O, how true it is that Ignorance is the mother of vice I 

Another reason why no remedy has been applied to this fearful 
malady is a long-standing, deep-seated, and constantly fomented 
prejudice in favor of the public-school system, which makes the 
politicians afraid to attack the monster lest they hurt their popu- 
larity. 

STILL ANOTHER DIFFICULTY 

is a want of harmony among those who see and lament the terrible 
evils which this system is bringing on the country, and who are 
willing to make any and every sacrifice to avert those evils. One 
says, Let us have the Bible in the schools. Another says, No ; I want 
no Bible in mine. A third says, Let us divide the school funds 
amongst all the different religious denominations in such a manner 
that each denomination shall, as a body, have control of a portion of 
those funds corresponding with the number of its members ; while a 
fourth says, Away with such silly nonsense ; we have far too much 
<ecclesiasticism in the public schools already. But is there not, we ask. 



54 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

A COMMON GROUND WHEREON EVERY FRIEND OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM CAN 
STAND ? 

Most undoubtedly there is. Let us recognize, just as the law of 
nature recognizes, the right and the duty of all parents, having the 
ability so to do, to educate their own children in their own way and 
by the use of their own funds. 

After all, it is not less the interest than the duty of parents, when 
they can do so, to pay the cost of their own children's education, 
and not to allow the State to pay it for them, for be it remembered 
that the cost and care of properly feeding, clothing, and educa- 
ting the child are but the price which Nattire dema?ids of par- 
ents for the incomparable treasure of the child's love, honor, and 
obedience, a?id just in proportion to the extent to which parents 
neglect or refuse to pay this price, in precisely the same propor- 
tion do they forfeit their right to this inestimable boon. 

Let us suppose that the State should take upon itself to feed and 
clothe, as well as to educate, the child ; does any one doubt that a 
child thus fed, clothed, and educated at the public expense would 
grow up almost wholly destitute of parental affection ? And who is 
so stupidly blind as not to see that the education of the child, after 
all, is the great nourisher of its affections? Respect, love, and 
veneration do not depend near so much on either the source or the 
character of the food which enters the stomach, as upon the source 
and character of that which is taken into the mind and heart. 

But in cases where parents have not sufficient worldly wealth to 
give their children a good elementary education, let the State aid 
them just exactly as it should aid them, when necessary, with means 
to feed and clothe their children, rather than let them either starve 
or go naked. But for the same reason that the State would not feed 
the children of its more needy citizens upon the most dainty and 
costly delicacies, nor clothe them in the finest silks and satins, so 
neither should it educate them in those higher or merely ornamental 
sciences not necessary for those avocations in which they are likely 
to engage in after life. And when the State furnishes educational 
aid, let it do so, always, in harmony with the principles of parental 
guai'dianship over the child. Let the parent in such cases select the 
school, and the State pay the teacher. Let this boon be extended to 
all who need State aid, without regard to differences in politics or 
religion. 

Perhaps, though, we shall be told that so radical a change in the 
public-school system, as that suggested, would work the destruction 



Fatal Errors Inherent in New England System. 55 

of the system itself. If that be so, then we would ask whether it is 
better for us to destroy the system , or to let the system destroy us ? 

Again, it may, perhaps, be objected that even if every parent in 
the land had the means and the privilege of educating his own chil- 
dren in his ownway, still there would always be found some parents 
in every community who would neglect this most sacred duty ; and 
what ought to be done with such parents ? We answer : What ought 
to be done with those heartless parents who, having the means at hand, 
either of their own or such as have been furnished by the State, to 
comfortably feed and clothe their children, would, nevertheless, 
deliberately leave them to die of starvation or perish with cold? 
In either case such parents should be punished as criminals against 
the laws both of God and society. But so long as the State under- 
takes to force upon the children of any class of parents a system of 
education which they cannot accept without a violation of con- 
science and of Nature's laws, it is nothing less than the most cruel 
tyranny on the part of the State to make such a system compulsory. 

Let every friend of educational reform unite in maintaining these 
plain, just, and most reasonable principles, and the day is not distant 
when — with Heaven's blessing — we shall restore parental authority, 
re-establish family government, and teach the rising generation to 
love, honor, and obey, not only their fathers and mothers, but also 
the laws, both of God and their country. 

THE ANTI-PARENTAL SCHOOL SYSTEM DISSECTED AND ANALYZED. 

Should we wish to ascertain the exact character and properties of 
the waters of our great Pacific ocean, we would not undertake to 
analyze the whole ocean, for that would be an endless task, but we 
would take up at most a few ounces of this water, and, after making 
a thorough analysis of it, we would announce the result as indicating 
the properties and character of the waters of the Pacific. So it is 
if we would make a careful and reliable analysis of the essential 
principles and elements which go to make up what is known as the 
public-school system. If we were to undertake to subject to an 
analytical test the whole system, with its entire paraphernalia of 
teachers, pupils, parents, school directors, school teachers, school 
books, school funds, and school houses, as they exist throughout the 
country, we should become amazed and bewildered at the magnitude 
of our undertaking, and would probably abandon the enterprise in 
despair. So let us take from this very large mass of school material 
a small quantity of its essential elements, just enough to be handled 
with ease and examined with care, and we shall be the better able to 



56 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

see what is the character of the ingredients which go to make up the 
system. In order that you, good reader, may not accuse us of un- 
fairness in our selection of the particular sample to be analyzed, we 
will allow you to choose your own material. Then cast your eyes 
around you among your friends and neighbors and name for us two 
of the very best, purest, most intelligent, highly-educated, and reli- 
able men of your acquaintance. Let them be men of your own re- 
ligion, and belonging to the same political party as yourself. In a 
word, let them be two men to whom, in preference to all others in 
the world, you would be willing to entrust the guardianship of that 
beautiful little girl of yours, should it please God to take you and 
and her mother away from her during her years of childhood. Now, 
these two friends of yours, whom we shall call A and B, we shall 
take it for granted, are the very best material to be found in that 
great mass of voters who control by their votes the destinies and 
shape the character of the public-school system as it exists in 
your city. 

Now, suppose these two mode* men and neighbors should some 
day come to your house and address you thus : Mr. C, we are informed 
that you are the father of a bright, beautiful, and intelligent little 
girl, now about seven years old — just the proper age to begin her 
education. We feel quite anxious that she should be properly edu- 
cated, and, to tell you the plain truth, we are afraid that if we leave 
the matter entirely with you her education will be neglected. Now 
here is what we propose to do. We propose that we — your two 
best friends — together with yourself, shall all enter into a written 
contract, binding ourselves during your daughter's minority to con- 
tribute annually a certain percentage upon the assessed value of our 
property, which shall constitute a fund for the education of this, your 
little girl. But it must, at the same time, and in the same contract, 
be stipulated that it shall at all times be in the power of a majority 
of us three to select the teachers and the school books for your child. 
Should you, against the wishes and without the consent of a major- 
ity of us, take your child away and send her to some other school, 
you must agree to forfeit — should we choose to exact it — not exceed- 
ing twenty dollars for the first offence, and not less than twenty dol- 
lars for each subsequent repetition thereof. You must also agree and 
bind yourself in advance not to withhold your assessment, even should 
you withdraw your child from the school of our selection, because 
we should in that event need the money for the education of other 
children. 

Now tell us, good reader, could you ever consent, while living 



Fatal Errors Inherent in New England System. 57 

and in the possession of your reasoning faculties, to entrust such a 
power as this over your infant child — girl or boy — to any two men 
in existence ? Would you not spurn such a proposition as the above 
with indignant scorn, come from what source it might? We may 
here remark, in passing, that it surely could not better the matter 
should these supposed friends and neighbors, in consideration of 
this proposed outrageous betrayal of your parental trust, even offer 
to perpetrate a similar wrong against their own children by turning 
over to you, the insulted father, a corresponding share in their 
parental authority. And yet, good reader, this miniature picture 
which we have just drawn of the public-school system presents 
that system in its very best possible aspect ; because we have repre- 
sented you, the father, as still allowed to retain in your own hands 
one-third of that parental jurisdiction and control which the God of 
nature requires you to exercise over your child, while the other 
two-thirds are to be entrusted to two of the very best men in the 
whole community. But under the public-school system, as it is by 
law established, instead of retaining in your own hands even so much 
as one-third of your parental authority, you retain only an infini- 
tesimal fraction thereof. Where there are, as in San Francisco, 
tens of thousands of voters, each father divides his parental au- 
thority into tens of thousands of equal fragments, retaining but 
one of these fragments for himself, whilst the great bulk of this 
authority, instead of being lodged, as in the case above supposed, 
in two of the very best men to be found in the city, is scattered 
around broadcast amongst tens of thousands of people, good, bad, 
and indifferent. It is gobbled up and wielded by every rough and 
every rake who is allowed to vote ; and this is what they call our 
great American Free-School System. 

Those who attempt a justification of this monstrous usurpation 
of parental authority never fail to intrench themselves behind the 
hackneyed and much abused maxim, that "the majority has the 
right to rule." But there are some things in which the majority 
has no right to rule. For example : The majority has no right to 
select for a man his religion ; neither has it a right to choose for a 
man the wife, nor for a woman the husband, who is to become a 
parent of his or her children. 

Now the teacher of a child is simply a person who, for the time 
being, acts as a substitute for its parents. But if a majority has no 
right to select the -principal, what right has it to select the sub- 
stitute? In other words, if a majority has no right to force a man 
or woman, who aspires to become the father or mother of a child, 



58 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

to marry a spouse, to whom he or she objects, on the ground that 
such a spouse by pernicious teachings or bad example would cor- 
rupt the children of such marriage, or poison their minds and hearts 
against the objecting party, then, in the name of consistency and com- 
mon sense, what right has this same majority to accomplish the self- 
same and even worse result, by selecting as the teacher (to take the 
place of both parents) a person who is distasteful to them and who 
may imperil and destroy the health, the lives, the honor, the virtue, 
and the filial affection of their children, as well as their own peace 
of mind, without in any way being held responsible to them or 
either of them for his conduct? 



CHAPTEK X. 

A VOICE FROM SAN OJJENTIN — CALIFORNIA'S EDUCATED CONVICTS — ALL THE 
YOUNGER CRIMINALS CAN READ AND WRITE — TWO MORE PENITENTIARIES 

NECESSARY TO ACCOMMODATE MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL PUPILS 

CALIFORNIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS THE HIGH ROAD TO THE PENITENTIARY 

HOW THE ONE SERVES AS A PREPARATORY DEPARTMENT FOR THE OTHER. 

The following is from resident director's (Lieutenant Governor 
Johnston's) biennial report, showing the condition of the California 
State prison and State prisoners for the two years ending June 30, 
1877. This report, under the caption of " Education," says : 

" Turnkey's Table, Number VII, showing the educational abilities 
of the inmates of the prison, gives the number who can read and 
write at nine hundred and eighty-five ; read but not write, at twenty- 
four ; neither read nor write, at three hundred and nine. If we 
consider the number of Chinese and Indians in our prisons who 
can neither read nor write, and deduct them from the whole number 
so as to match our whites and negroes against the same in other 
States, it will be found that ours possess the advantage in a large 
degree. In fact, among the younger convicts they can all read and 
write." 

The Turnkey's Table, Number III, shows that the number of Chi- 
namen in the State prison is 197. Now, if we deduct this 197 
from the entire number of convicts who can neither read nor write, 
it leaves just 112 who can neither read nor write against 985 who 
can both read and write. Then again, from this 112 there remain 
still to be deducted the Indians, whose number is not given in the 
Turnkey's Table. But the most startling revelation contained in the 



A Voice from San Shientin. 59 

above extract is found in the concluding sentence, which says : " In 
fact, among the younger convicts, they can all read and write." 

Now, of the younger convicts, as appears from the Turnkey's Ta- 
ble, (No. 6,) there are some 253 but twenty-one years old or under, 
while there are 831 under thirty years old. But while our young 
State is making such rapid strides in the way of forcing her boys 
first into her anti-parental schools and then into her penitentiaries, 
her great exemplar, Massachusetts, it would seem, is not neglectful 
of her laurels. The regular Boston correspondent of the San Fran- 
cisco Morning Call, under date of November 16, 1877, says: 
" The rapid progress of knowledge pectcliar to the educational 
" system of this State has led to the erection of two more State 
" prisons, one of which, for women, was successfully opened a 
" few days ago, the number of wicked females who knocked for 
" admission being forty-four. Present indications point toward the 
" rapid filling up of this new institution in a few months." 1 

We are constantly told, by the friends and admirers of our anti- 
parental educational system, that it is much better and more econom- 
ical for the State to expend money for schools and school-houses than 
for jails and penitentiaries. Now, taking the foregoing figures as a 
basis of calculation, it would be a very interesting process, and would 
doubtless lead to most important results, if some admirer of our pres- 
ent educational system, who is a good calculator, would make an 
estimate in dollars and cents of the amount of money saved to the 
State of California per annum by that kind of education, which is 
sustained at a cost of more than two and a half millions of dollars a 
year, and which sends to the State prison its hundreds of beardless 
boys, while total illiteracy — which we all lament as a great evil — 
sends not so much as one solitary boy to that popular institution. 

Should anybody, in making such an estimate, find the profits ex- 
ceedingly small in proportion to the investment, let him not convert 
that fact into an argument against education itself, but only against 
this anti-parental system of education ; a system which, being con- 
ceived in crime, brought forth in crime, and nurtured in ci - ime, 
must, of necessity, propagate crime. Hoping that some one better 
versed in figures than ourselves will solve for us the above problem, 
we shall now proceed to show 

HOW IT IS THAT OUR EDUCATED BOYS FIND THEIR WAY TO THE PENITENTIARY. 

Here, we will suppose, is an honest, industrious, hard-working 
laboring man, who has a family consisting of himself, his wife, 

1 See Call of Novenn-er 25, 1877. 



60 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

and half a dozen children, half girls and half boys. To put 
the case in as favorable an aspect as possible, we will suppose 
that he is in moderately good circumstances, being out of debt 
and the owner of a comfortable homestead, but is compelled to 
rely solely on his own labor and that of his wife for means 
wherewith to feed and clothe his family. All his children are 
of an age to attend school, and all are attending the public 
schools, as the law directs. In the first place, heavy and fre- 
quent drafts are made on the father's scanty and hard-earned re- 
sources in order to supply these children with all the required 
books and stationery. These six children, too, must each and all 
be dressed, not according to the means of their parents, but accord- 
ing to the rules of the school and the demands of fashion, and inas- 
much as the more wealthy and aristocratic classes prescribe the law 
of fashion, they must dress as well as the children of the man who 
counts his wealth by the million. If they do not so dress, they will 
have to encounter not only the contemptuous sneers of fellow-pupils 
and class-mates, but, perhaps, the displeasure of teachers, if not 
expulsion from school. The father would reason and, perhaps, re- 
monstrate with the teacher on the subject of these rigid and extrava- 
gant rules of dress, but then he remembers that the law has said 
that the teacher of a public school is not the agent of the parent, 
nor answerable to him for his conduct toward the pupil. He also 
remembers that the law makes it criminal for a parent to insult a 
teacher, while the teacher may insult the parent with impunity ; 
and for these reasons he does not care to risk an altercation with the 
teacher on the subject of th^ boy's dress ; it would be too unequal 
a contest. So, in order to meet these growing demands for books, 
stationery, and clothing for their children, these poor parents are 
compelled to work harder, dress lighter, and feed more scantily than 
is conTpatible with either health or comfort. The father rises earlier 
in the morning than formerly, works later at night, and goes with 
worn-out, ragged, orpatched-up clothes, in order that his eldest boy 
may get a new suit so as to make as respectable an appearance as 
any lad at the Lincoln School. 

The mother, too, in worn-out and tattered apparel, plies her wash- 
board with unwonted vigor in order to get money to pay the dress- 
maker for fitting, cutting, and making Lizzie's nice new dress, for 
the teacher says she must not come to school looking like an old wash- 
erwoman's girl. The daughter, too, is learning to play upon the 
piano, and of course it will not do for her to lend a helping hand to- 
wards washing either clothes or dishes, for the teacher says it will 



A Voice from San $)uentin. 61 

' spoil the shape of her fingers and impair the delicacy of her sense 
of touch. Thus both father and mother work harder than slaves, 
and dress coarser than beggars, in order that their children may en- 
joy the great advantages of our glorious free-school system of edu- 
cation. 

In the meantime these children are sitting in the same classes, 
studying the same books, wearing the same costly fabrics, partici- 
pating in the same amusements, contracting the same habits, imbib- 
ing the same love of ease, and the same aversion to manual labor, 
and the same contempt for manual laborers, as do their far more 
wealthy and aristocratic school-fellows. 

Leaving out of sight the five younger children, we shall now give 
our undivided attention to the eldest son of this poor laborer. 

After years of study he at length completes his course at the Lin- 
coln High School, acquitting himself with great honor, amidst the 
cordial congratulations of professors and school directors, and elicit- 
ing the vociferous applause of the admiring multitude. We may im- 
agine we see his poor old father crouching on the outskirts of the 
crowd, feasting his eyes upon an occasional glimpse of his boy, but 
not daring to approach him because he has no clothes fit to be seen 
on such an occasion ; doubtless that father is picturing to himself a 
brilliant future for his boy. He is, perhaps, looking forward to the 
time when he shall be a governor, a senator, or possibly President 
of the United States. Very likely, too, he fancies that in his declin- 
ing years he shall be able to look to his son for that assistance and 
support which his own exhausted means may then refuse to afford 
him. But alas ! how baseless are all these castles in the air. The 
day .after quitting school the young man finds himself, for once, 
thrown on his own unaided resources. His father says to him : 
" Well, my boy, I have been a long time struggling with pov- 
erty and want in order that you might become educated. You 
see that both your mother and I are in rags, and that handsome 
suit which you now wear is yet to be paid for. You now have 
a fortune in your education, and hereafter you must learn to shift 
for yourself, and, if possible, lend a helping hand from time to 
time to the support of your younger brothers and sisters." 

Thus situated, the young man, probably for the first time in his 
whole life, asks himself seriously the question : What business he is 
going to follow. A more appropriate question would be, What 
business can he follow ? There he stands in the midst of a great 
bustling city, without a cent of money at his command ; without 
friends, without occupation, and without the necessary qualifica- 



6a " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

tions for any earthly employment within his reach. Probably his 
first effort will be to find a position as clerk in some bank or other 
business establishment ; but he soon learns that these positions are 
all filled by the sons of wealthy or influential parents. Occasionally 
he meets a former schoolmate, discharging the duties of some cov- 
eted place, but, on inquiry, he learns that he has obtained his position 
at the instance of a wealthy father or an influential friend. Failing 
in everything else, he at length seeks for copying as a means of earn- 
ing bread. He gets hold of a city directory and makes a list of the 
names and locations of all the law offices in the city. He then goes 
from office to office in quest of the only work he really knows how- 
to do. But everywhere he is forestalled ; everywhere he is doomed 
to disappointment. On every hand he meets young men and boys 
similarly situated, and making similar fruitless efforts to raise a few 
dimes with which to stave off starvation. Already the boy has spent 
weeks in an earnest but vain endeavor to find work as a copyist. In 
the meantime he has been living partly on his old father and partly 
on what he could pick up at the free-lunch tables. Seeing the son's 
extreme embarrassment, the father perhaps suggests to him that, in- 
asmuch as he has been disappointed in everything else, he had bet- 
ter come and help him lay down those cobble-stones on Battery street, 
where he can at least earn money enough to buy victuals and clothes. 
But alas ! his hands are wholly unused to toil, and, what is infinitely 
worse, he has been, as we before said, so trained up as to despise both 
manual labor and manual laborers. He would be ashamed for one 
of his school companions to even meet him walking the street in com- 
pany with his own father, because of the old man's horn-like palms 
and his laborer's dress ; so that, even if he knew how to work, still, 
in view of the fact that it was only the other day that he finished his 
educational course with so much eclat and amidst such a shower of 
bouquets as rained around him from the fair hands of San Francisco's 
wealth and beauty, is it to be expected that he is now going to heave 
cobble-stones on a public street here, under the very shadow of his 
alma mater, to be twitted and jeered at by those who envied him the 
literary honors with which he came loaded from the Lincoln school? 
No, no ; that is utterly impossible ; pi-opose anything but that. Yet, 
says he, something must be done, and that soon ; I must have clothes, 
and I must have bread ; the world owes me a living, and I intend to 
have it. Thus saying, he turns his back upon his humble and des- 
titute home, and betakes himself again to perambulating the streets, 
ready for any desperate turn in events that promises him money. 
Let the reader pause here and ask himself the question, What is 



A Voice fro?n San £hientin. 63 

there to save this youth from becoming a pest to society, a disgrace 
to his old father and mother, and finally a convicted felon, doomed 
to serve the State within penitentiary walls ? Perhaps it will be 
claimed that the bare recollection of his newly acquired literary 
honors, and the fear of losing the esteem of those who, the other 
day, so vociferously applauded his youthful oratory and threw at his 
feet such a profusion of flowers, ought, of itself, to be sufficient to 
shield him from temptation's harm. But, unfortunately, those 
withered flowers will not serve for food, nor can he make clothes 
either of approving smiles or shouts of applause. But can it be 
possible, you say, that one so young, so intelligent, and so well edu- 
cated has no respect for the law? Why, sir, if you talk to him 
about respecting the law he will laugh you to scorn. Who is it that 
respects the law, he Will say, except just so far as the law subserves 
his purposes? Have we not laws against bribery ? And yet do not 
even our law-makers, on election days, send out their dirty minions 
with money in their pockets with which to buy their way into the 
very halls of legislation ? Are not seats in the United States Senate 
sometimes bought with gold? And does not even the election of a 
United States President often depend more upon successful lying, 
frauds, and bribery, than upon the people's honest votes? Then 
why prate to me about the sanctity of the law when the very men 
who make the laws trample them unceremoniously under their feet 
whenever it suits their purposes ? But, you will say, if this youth 
has no regard for human law, surely he cannot be wholly indifferent 
to the laws of God. Be not so fast, my dear sir. Have you for- 
gotten that the boy was educated in our public schools, where it is 
a criminal offence, punishable by a forfeiture of all interest in the 
public school moneys, to even mention the subject of religion in the 
hearing of a pupil ? And do you know that there is no such pro- 
hibition against inculcating the horrible doctrines of atheism in these 
schools? That many of our public-school teachers are avowed 
atheists, who believe neither in God nor devil ; neither in hell nor 
heaven ; and that our young hero is a firm believer in these dismal 
and diabolical doctrines? Very true, you say ; I knew very well 
that no religion was allowed to be taught in the public schools, but 
then why did not his father and mother teach him religion at home? 
We first answer the question by asking another, and it is this : 
How do you know that his parents themselves had any well defined 
notions of religion, or, in fact, any religion at all? If they had 
firmly believed in the teachings even of that natural religion which 
an Almighty hand has written in indelible characters on every human 



64 " Poisofi Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

heart, they surely would never have consented to surrender to the 
public at large the right to select the teachers, and in all essential 
particulars to shape the mental and moral as well as the physical 
destinies of their child. 

But suppose that his parents were in every other particular real 
models of perfection, both in their professions and in their practices 
of religion, was it to be expected that he, their son, would accept 
religious instruction from them? Are not they illiterate, and is not 
he educated ? And shall wisdom take lessons from ignorance ? Has 
he not learned to despise them both for their poverty and their sim- 
plicity ? Can it be doubted that even the sacrifices which they made 
in his behalf; that the very patches with which they mended their 
old garments, in order that he might be handsomely dressed ; that 
the very toils and hardships which have wrinkled their brows, soiled 
their features, and imparted the bony touch to their palms, in order 
that he might learn to lead a life of ease and freedom from manual 
labor, are, on his part, requited with coldness and contempt? And 
after learning to despise his parents, is it at all likely that he would 
profit either by their religious instruction or their praiseworthy ex- 
ample? No, no; their religion, just like their toilsome lives and 
their old clothes, may be good enough for them, but to an educated 
young man like himself it is only a bundle of cumbersome and use- 
less rubbish, and he will have none of it. 

Then, since our young hero has learned to respect neither the laws 
of man nor the laws of God, and will neither be directed by the 
good counsels nor influenced by the exemplary lives of his own 
father and mother, where, let it be asked, shall we look for the 
controlling power that is to shape his future destinies ? Just follow 
him as he hurries along yonder busy street and you shall see. Al- 
ready he is in company with half-a-dozen of his late school-mates, 
each of whom has a tale of woe and disappointments to tell, quite 
like his own. Now, for the first time since leaving school, each and 
all of these boys find themselves in congenial society. They feel 
that the world cares nothing for them, and they care nothing for 
the world. They all have empty stomachs and seedy clothes, and 
there is not money enough in the crowd to purchase even one night's 
lodging at the meanest lodging-house in the city. 

One of the party suggests that, having failed in everything else, 
he has an idea of making an effort to get a position as dish-washer 
in some hotel, or, failing in that also, he might seek employment as 
stable-boy to clean out the stalls of some livery stable. The major- 
ity of his companions, however, frown down the proposition with 



The Political State as a Teacher of Morality. 65 

contemptuous indignation, and our hero threatens never hereafter to 
speak to the low-bred rascal should he ever again be guilty of ad- 
vancing a proposition so far beneath the dignity of an educated gen- 
tleman. In order, however, to put at rest the question as to the feas- 
ibility of finding even that kind of employment, one little fellow, the 
smallest in the crowd, puts in a word to assure his companions that 
there is not enough in the last suggestion to be worth quarrelling 
about. He says he has been, for the past three days and a good part 
of the nights, hunting from house to house, both in public hotels and 
private dwellings, for any kind of light work such as boys could do, 
and everywhere he has found the field already occupied, most always 
by Chinamen ; whereupon they all agree that they could not if they 
would, and would not if they could, enter into successful competi- 
tion with Chinamen for the honor of discharging the menial duties 
of either stable boys or kitchen servants. 

At this particular juncture one of the party suggests that his old 
widowed aunt has $500 in gold twenties buried under her barn floor, 
and that he knows just where to find the cash. They can get this 
money and nobody but themselves need be any the wiser for it.* He 
says she has plenty without that, and she is such a stingy old hag 
that it would be serving her just right for them to go and relieve her 
of that five hundred. We do not propose to follow this little band 
of young hoodlums farther for the present, but if any friend of our 
present public-school system can discover any motive which will 
deter from crime and preserve from the penitentiary any one of the 
hundreds upon hundreds of our city's youths, whose education and 
situation in life differ in no essential particular from that of the boys 
just above described, he will by pointing out such a motive unques- 
tionably confer a great and lasting benefit both on the rising gener- 
ation and on society at large. From the fate of this eldest boy of 
our poor laborer we shall leave the reader to guess the doom which 
awaits his younger brothers and sisters. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE POLITICAL STATE AS A TEACHER OF MORALITY. 

Section 1702 of our California School Law provides, among 
other things, that " It shall be the duty of all teachers to endeavor 
" to impress upon the minds of the pupils the principles of mo- 
44 rality." 



66 ' ' Poison Drops " in the Federal Senate. 

But just here the question arises, " What is morality ?" And how 
is a teacher to know what it is that he or she is required to teach in 
order to comply with this requirement of the statute ? 

The immortal Washington has said : "Let us with caution indulge 
" the supposition that morality can be maintained without relig- 
" ion." But if morality cannot be maintained without religion, then 
how is it possible, we would inquire, for the teacher to inculcate the 
principles of morality without inculcating the principles of religion? 
But the principles of religion are understood by the Jews differently 
from what they are by the Christians, and by the Roman Catholics 
differently from what they are by Protestants, by the Episcopalians 
differently from what they are by the Presbyterians, by the Presby- 
terians differently from what they are by the Unitarians, and by those 
who reject the authority both of the Old and New Testament differ- 
ently from what they are by either Jews or Christians of any denom- 
ination whatever. 

Then how is it possible for the State to require the teaching of 
morals in the public schools without requiring as the basis of such 
teaching the inculcation of religious principles, such as are necessa- 
rily antagonistic to the conscientious convictions of the parents of 
at least a portion of the children attending these schools ? It is true 
we hear a great deal about the " broad pri?zciples of common mo- 
" rality" and of a common religion, but we have never yet had the 
good fortune to find anybody who was able to give a definition of 
this common morality or common religion to the perfect satisfaction 
of any one, except perhaps it was the self-conceited author of such 
definition. 

A certain professor of our State Normal School, to whom we not 
long ago addressed an open letter, (which, by the way, we believe 
has never been answered,) in an address of his which was published 
in the May number of the Defender, 1S81 , took the ground that "the 
ethics of the Ten Commandments and of the Sermon on the Mount 
are as absolutely unsectarian as the law of gravitation." Now to 
assume that the Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount 
are absolutely unsectarian is to assume that people of all religious sects 
or denominations, as well as all non-religionists, understand them 
in the same sense, and accept them as coming with the same author- 
ity and having the same binding force. 

But is it true that people of all religious denominations, as well 
as non-religionists, do understand either the Ten Commandments or 
the Sermon on the Mount in the same sense ; or as coming with the 
same authority, or as having the same binding force ? We say no ! 



The Political State as a Teacher of Morality. 67 

Most emphatically no. Waiving the differences in the various trans- 
lations of these important parts of the Bible, we shall proceed at 
once to consider some of the various and conflicting beliefs which 
have been made to rest for their foundation either upon those Ten 
Commandments or upon the Sermon on the Mount. Take, for exam- 
ple, the commandment, " Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath 
•day," and we find even Christians differing widely as to whether 
under the Christian dispensation the keeping holy of the Sunday is 
a sufficient compliance with the requirements of that commandment. 
As an illustration of this fact we may remark that the leading print- 
ing and publishing house of Oakland, and in fact one of the foremost 
establishments of its kind on the Pacific coast, is owned and run by 
an association of Christians who would conscientiously regard it as 
a sin to do unnecessary work on a Saturday ; and we all know that 
pretty much our entire Jewish population entertain a similar belief. 
But not only do our people differ as to the particular day which is 
required by the above commandment to be kept holy, but they differ 
also as to the proper mode of keeping it holy. Thus, the Catholic 
believes that unless released from the obligation by some lawful ex- 
cuse, such as distance, sickness, or the like, he should sanctify the 
Sunday, in part at least, by assisting at mass, while other Christian 
denominations recognize no such obligation. Some Christians be- 
lieve it sinful to engage in hunting, fishing, or almost any kind of 
amusement on the Sunday, while others, equally conscientious, re- 
gard these pastimes as harmless. Then, again, a large number of 
people disbelieve both in the Old and New Testament, and conse- 
quently do not look upon the commandment to keep holy the Sab- 
bath day as having any binding force. We here state these different 
views with reference to the above-quoted commandment, not for the 
purpose of discussing the question as to which are right and which 
are wrong, but for the purpose of showing that such differences exist ; 
and in view of the fact that they do exist, we maintain that it is im- 
possible for the public-school teacher to teach said commandment 
according to any of said views without violating Section 1672 of our 
public-school law, which declares that " no sectarian or denomina- 
tional doctrine must be taught therein." Perhaps we shall be told 
that the commandments should be taught just in the words in which 
we find them, without interpretation or comment. But let us see for 
a moment how this would work. Here is a ten-year-old boy, we 
will suppose, who has just read from his Bible the command, " Re- 
member thou keep holy the Sabbath day." The boy being naturally 
of an inquiring mind, turns to his teacher and asks the very natural 



68 "Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

question, "What is the Sabbath clay?" What ought the teacher 
under such circumstances to say? Ought he to say, I don't know ; 
or, I am not allowed to tell you, because to tell you would be sec- 
tarian teaching? To such an answer, the boy in his own mind 
would probably reply, " Of what earthly use is this command to 
keep holy the Sabbath day, if I am not to know what the Sabbath 
day is?" And suppose that the boy, still pressing his inquiry, asks 
the further question, " In what way am I to keep the Sabbath holy? 
What is it necessary to do, and what necessary to abstain from doing 
in order to obey this commandment?" Must the teacher again 
reply, " I am not allowed to tell you." 

If anything in the world is calculated to bring both the teacher and 
the Bible into ridicule, we think that such a teaching as this would 
surely accomplish that result. 

We do not propose in this connection to discuss the question as to 
the State's right to enact and enforce Sunday laws ; but we may re- 
mark in passing that it appears to us as if legislation in that direction 
ought to be limited to the enactment of such laws as have for their 
object the protection of citizens in the uninterrupted discharge of 
what they believe to be their religious duties, and not such as may 
be designed to compel an observance of the Sunday in any particular 
manner for the spiritual welfare of those thus compelled. We think 
there would be but little merit in a man's attending church on a 
Sunday, not for the love of God, but for the love of the money which 
he might have to pay as a fine for his failure to attend. Persecutions 
against conscience may make hypocrites, but never genuine converts 
to the doctrines thus sought to be enforced. 

With reference to the Sermon on the Mount, its different interpre- 
tations are no more harmonious than are those of the commandment 
referred to. Even people professing themselves Christians differ 
widely as to whether that sermon was a divine or only a human ut- 
terance. The Unitarians, for example, not believing in the divinity 
of Christ, only look upon that sermon as a human production, while 
other Christian denominations accept its every word as the infallible 
teaching of infinite wisdom ; so that the teacher cannot undertake to 
tell his pupil in the public school, after reading to him that sermon, 
whether he is to accept it as the word of God or only as the word of 
a man, without again invading the realms of denominational teach- 
ing. And all will admit that there is an infinite difference between 
the weight to be attached to the language of an All-wise God and 
even the wisest utterances of a mere man when giving expression to 
the deductions of his own finite and feeble reason. Then, again, as 



The Political State as a Teacher of Morality. 69 

It is with the interpretation of the commandments so it is with the 
interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. There are many 
passages in that sermon which are very differently construed 
by people of different religious denominations. For example, 
it is there said, " Ye have heard that it was said to them of old, Thou 
shalt not forswear thyself, but shall perform unto the Lord thine 
oaths; but I say unto you, Swear not at all." This passage is by 
many very conscientious people interpreted as prohibiting the taking 
•of an oath as a witness or otherwise, and hence they never swear, 
even in our courts of justice, but affirm. 

Again, it is said in the Sermon on the Mount, as read in the Douay 
Bible, " If thy right eye scandalize thee, (or as the new version has 
it, ' cause thee to stumble,'} pluck it out and cast it from thee, for 
it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather 
than that thy whole body go into hell." Now suppose that some pub- 
lic-school teacher, when reading or having read this passage to his 
pupils, should be asked the question, "What is the meaning of 
bell ? " what answer could he give which would not be sectarian or 
denominational in its character? How could he so frame a defini- 
tion of the word " hell" as to make it acceptable both to the Uni- 
versalist and the Presbyterian, or the Roman Catholic? 

In this same sermon it is said : " When thou fastest, anoint thy 
head and wash thy face that thou appear not to men to fast, but to 
thy Father, who is in secret, and thy Father who seeth in seci'et 
will repay thee." Now, if the public-school teacher were asked by 
a pupil whether this passage was to be taken as a Divine authority 
for the practice of fasting, how could he answer this question with- 
out again violating that section of the Code which forbids all sec- 
tarian or denominational teachings in the public schools ? 

Again, Christians of some denominations interpret the Sermon 
on the Mount as authorizing the absolute dissolution, by divorce, of 
the valid bonds of matrimony for certain causes, so as to allow one 
-of the divorced parties to marry again during the life of the other, 
while other Christians maintain that all such second marriages dur- 
ing the lives of both the divorced parties are, morally speaking, 
invalid and wrong. 

Indeed, it would require a volume to point put all the different 
interpretations which have been placed upon the Ten Command- 
ments and the Sermon on the Mount. How, then, is it possible to 
teach even these portions of the Bible in the public schools without 
teaching sectarian or denominational doctrine ? It certainly would 
■not be called teaching in any other educational institution in the 



jo " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

wide world (except it be an American public school) to simply 
cause the pupil to pronounce, like a trained parrot, a certain form, 
of words and at the same time refuse to tell him the meaning of 
those words. 

Our conclusions, then, are these, namely : First ; that Washing- 
ton was right, when he said: " Let us with caution indulge the 
supposition that morality can be maintained without religion." 
Second ; that the State cannot teach morality without teaching 
religion as its foundation. Third ; that the State cannot teach either 
morality or religion without either establishing a new religious 
denomination, or else teaching it as it is taught by some one of the 
existing denominations. Fourth ; that the State can neither teach 
religion as it is now taught by any existing denomination, nor as it 
might be taught by a State-begotten denomination, without a fatal 
infringement upon the doctrine of religious liberty ; and that, there- 
fore, the true and proper business of the State is not to teach nor 
to pay for teaching either morality or religion, but to foster and 
encourage the teaching of both, by carefully and scrupulously 
guarding and protecting the equal rights of all citizens to worship 
God and to educate their children according to the dictates of their 
own consciences. 

We say, let the State neither undertake to teach nor to pay for 
the teaching of morality or religion, because it is impossible to teach 
a State morality without teaching a State religion, and it is impos- 
sible to teach a State religion without the destruction of the religious 
liberty of the citizen. Should the State ever assume the burden 
of paying for religious teaching, its next step would logically be to 
assume the right to say what that religious teaching should be. It 
is in order to make it harmonize with the principles here asserted 
that the seventh proposition of our platform is" so framed as to 
allow every parent, whose child is entitled to receive a secular edu- 
cation at public expense, to select the school wherein that secular 
education shall be given, so that if in obedience to conscience he 
elect so to do, the parent may without cost to the State secure for 
such child a moral and religious training at the same time that, at 
the State's expense, it is receiving its secular training. 

In order to do this, we see no practical way, except to pay the 
teacher, not according to the time he is employed in teaching, but 
according to his success in imparting to his pupils secular knowl- 
edge — the only kind of knowledge for which (as we believe) the 
State can venture to pay without ultimate clanger to the principles 
of religious liberty. We can see no more objection to the State's- 



The Political State as a Teacher of Morality. ji 

paying a religious teacher according to results for imparting secular 
knowledge to a child which has to be educated at public expense 
than there would be in its paying a religious stone-cutter by the job 
for dressing a certain quantity of building stone to be used in the 
erection of a public building. 

If two stone-cutters are working by the piece for the Government, 
and one of them works and curses, while the other works and 
prays, we can see no good reason why the man who prays should 
get less pay for his work than does the man who curses, for work 
of precisely the same quality and quantity. So, likewise, if there 
be two teachers working by the job for the Government in the 
business of teaching children to read, write, and cipher, and if one 
of them should teach Tom Paine's "Age of Reason" as a reading 
book, scoff at everything which Christians regard as sacred, and 
finally complete his work by turning over to the State a score of 
infidel scholars, perfect in reading, writing, and arithmetic, while 
the other uses the Bible as a class-reader, speaks reverently of God 
and religion, and eventually graduates from his school some twenty 
Chi-istian gentlemen, perfect masters of the three R's, would there 
be any good reason why the first-named teacher should be paid for 
his secular teaching and the other get nothing for his ? 

In the cases supposed we would ask the State to pay nothing for 
inculcating the principles of Tom Paine, and nothing for teaching 
the doctrines of the Bible, but in each case we would have the teacher 
paid for teaching his pupils how to read without regard to the fact 
that in one case they had used Paine's "Age of Reason," and in the 
other case the Bible as a class-book. And we would do this, not be- 
cause we claim that there is any comparison between the writings of 
Tom Paine and the Bible, but because we ai*e opposed to having the 
State step between the parent and the child in a matter of so much 
importance as that which concerns the child's education touching re- 
ligious subjects. 

If we recognize the State in its political capacity as having the 
right to decide for us and for our children as to the relative merits 
of the Bible and Tom Paine's "Age of Reason" as class-books, we 
virtually agree to stand by its decision ; and for a Christian to agree 
to stand by its decision would, in effect, be to agree to apostatize from 
his faith whenever the State demands such a sacrifice. 

To reiterate our position, the principle for which we are contend- 
ing is not that the political State ought to enfoixe the teaching of some 
particular kind of religion, or any religion at all, but that it ought to 



*T2 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

leave parents perfectly free to obey the dictates of their own con- 
sciences in that regard. 

It has sometimes been suggested that the plan we propose might en- 
able the teacher to proselytize his pupils to his own faith against the 
will and consciences of their parents. To this suggestion we reply 
that one of the very strongest arguments in favor of this plan is that it 
would place in the hands of the parents of each child the very best pos- 
sible safeguard against such proselytizing. The safeguard to which 
we allude is found in the fact that, upon the very first intimation of any 
such proselytizing, the parent could and would withdraw his child 
from school and thereby diminish the teacher's pay. In that regard 
the proposed system would be infinitely superior to the present one ; 
for it is a well-known fact that, notwithstanding the statutory law for- 
bidding the teaching of sectarian doctrines in the public schools, yet 
whenever the teachers, the school directors, and a majority of the pub- 
lic in any given locality have a leaning in favor of or against any given 
sect, that fact is pretty sure to make itself felt in the public-school 
room, either in the books used or the instruction given. Under such 
circumstances, the teacher has everything to gain and nothing to lose 
by overriding the law and the rights of those belonging to the un- 
popular creed, in obedience to the wishes of the more popular sect, 
at whose will and pleasure he holds his position and draws his sal- 
ary. Under the plan which we propose, the teacher or principal 
of each school, being master of his own time and the author and 
architect of his own discipline, could easily adjust matters in such 
a way as to give moral and religious instructions to the children of 
such parents as might so desire without any encroachment upon either 
the time or the religious prerogatives of pupils belonging to a differ- 
ent faith or to no faith at all. In proof of this we need but to look 
around us right here in the cities of Oakland and San Francisco, where 
there are scores and scores of private schools being taught, in some 
instances by Presbyterians, in others by Congregationalists, in others 
by Methodists, in others by Roman Catholics, etc., and in pretty 
nearly, if not quite, all of these schools there are pupils whose parents 
belong some to one creed and some to another, and some to no creed 
whatever, and there are classes in which denominational doctrines are 
taught to those children whose parents desire it without the least in- 
terference with others whose parents are of a different way of thinking. 

We frequently hear of troubles and contentions in the public schools, 
though pretendedly non-sectarian, because of the sectarian teachings 
therein practised, in defiance both of the statutory law and of the rights 



The Author Interviewed on the School Question. 73 

of parents and children, while in schools professedly denominational 
we seldom or never hear of any such complaint. 

The reason of this difference is obvious. In the former case the 
teacher is not amenable to the parents of his pupils, but in the latter 
he is. 

We want no Board of Education, sitting in judgment, to determine 
whether certain teachings in the public schools are antagonistic to the 
faith of some of the parents whose children attend these schools. If 
parents themselves do not know what they religiously believe, we are 
at a loss to know how a board of politicians, called school directors, 
can inform them. We want no State standard for either morality or 
religion. If any one desires to see a specimen of State morals and 
State religion as taught by State authority, let him read the recent 
proceedings of the California State prison investigating committee. 
In the course of those proceedings the fact was revealed that certain 
convicts, whose terms of penal service for crimes of which they stood 
convicted were about expiring, and against whom other criminal 
charges were awaiting trial in the courts, found in their moral in- 
structor a most willing and efficient adviser and assistant in their 
efforts to baffle the officers of the law, avoid re-arrest, and thus de- 
feat the ends of justice. Such is State morality, taught under State 
authority, and at the State's expense. 



CHAPTER XII. 



THE AUTHOR INTERVIEWED ON THE SCHOOL QUESTION. 

The following is from The Oakland (California) Mirror for 
December, 1881 : 

Last week Mr. Montgomery returned to Oakland from San 
Diego, where he has recently purchased a ranch, and was soon 
called upon by our reporter on educational matters, who informed 
him that Gen. Eaton, United States Commissioner of Education, 
had recently been in Oakland and stated he had heard in Washing- 
ton of an anti-public-school man in California named Zach. Mont- 
gomery, and that he should like to know more of him and his pecu- 
liar views, and that he had exacted a px-omise from him (the 
reporter) to interview this odd Californian, and to send him a copy 
of such interview. 

" Sit down," said Mr. Montgomery. 

The reporter returned thanks and seated himself, with pencil and 
note-book in hand, and, after learning incidentally that his hospita- 



74 '''•Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

ble host was a native of Nelson county, Kentucky, the interview 
then opened vigorously and ran as follows : 

Reporter. Now, Mr. Montgomery, have you any objections to 
answering a few questions relative to your object in withdrawing 
from the legal profession and devoting yourself to the agitation of 
the school question and the progress which that agitation is making? 

Mr. Montgomery. None in the world, sir. This agitation con- 
cerns the public, and the public have a right to know all about it. 

Reporter. Is it true that your object is to procure a division of 
the public-school funds upon what is called a sectarian basis, upon 
a plan similar to that once proposed by Archbishop Hughes, of 
New York? 

Mr. Montgomery. No, sir, it is not true ; and I will further 
state that, while I am a firm believer in the doctrines and teachings 
of my own church, the Catholic, I now am, and always have been, 
utterly opposed upon principle to the State's taxing any class of citi- 
zens to pay for teaching anybody's children any kind of doctrines 
or principles touching the subject of religion, either pro or con, when 
the citizens thus taxed or any of them do not believe in the doctrine 
so taught. 

Reporter. Will you be good enough, for the benefit of the 
readers of The Mirror, to give me a brief outline of your true po- 
sition on this educational question ? 

Mr. Montgomery. Certainly, sir, since you desire it. My 
views in brief I keep as standing matter on the last page of my 
Review, the Family's Defender, epitomized in the shape of seven 
short propositions, which are substantially as follows : 

I maintain, in the first place, that the cost of educating children , 
just like the cost of feeding and clothing them, is a debt which every 
parent owes to his own children, and that it is as unjust to take one 
man's money with which to educate the children of another who is 
able to educate them himself as it would be to take one man's 
money to buy victuals and clothes for children whose pai'ents have 
the means wherewith to feed and clothe them. Hence, I contend 
that education, at public expense, ought to be limited to those chil- 
dren whose parents are unable to educate them. I further contend 
that, as a rule, education, when at public expense, should be re- 
stricted to the elementary English branches, coupled with such an 
industrial education as will fit the party educated to earn an honest 
living. I believe, also, that the whole business of teaching school 
should be thrown open to private enterprise and free competition, 
just like practising law or medicine or running a shoe factory ; and 
then I would allow every parent who is deemed fit to be the guardian 
Df his own children to select the particular school wherein they are 
to be educated. I would have as our only school officers one or 
more examiners, either elected or appointed for each district, whose 
duty it should be to periodically examine, in the legally appointed 
secular branches, all such pupils as are being taught at public ex- 
pense, and to report upon the value of the teacher's services as indi- 
cated by the progress of his pupils, so that he might be paid accord- 



The Author Interviewed on the School Question. 75 

ing to that value. I would have no questions asked as to whether the 
teachers were Catholics, Protestants, Jews, or Free-thinkers ; or 
whether, in addition to the secular training given at public expense, 
these same teachers had, either gratuitously or at private expense, 
and at the request of parents, given religious instructions to any or 
all of their pupils. 

Reporter. By limiting education at public expense to the com- 
mon English branches, would not many of our brightest youths be 
deprived of the possibility of obtaining such an education as is at all 
in keeping with their talents, and the State thereby be made the 
loser ? 

Mr. Montgomery. I said, '•'- as a rzde" education, when at pub- 
lic expense, should be thus limited, but most general rules, you 
know, have their exceptions ; and, in this case, I would make an 
exception in favor of such youths as possess extraordinary talent for 
any particular science, coupled with a corresponding degree of merit. 

Reporter. But where and how could you draw the line between 
those parents who are and who are not able to educate their children 
at their own expense ? 

Mr. Montgomery. There may be many ways of di-awing this 
line, but in the absence of a better way I would suggest that the law 
be so framed as to require every parent who has children of school 
age, and who is worth a given sum per child to be educated, over 
and above his debts and liabilities, exclusive of property exempt 
from execution, to educate his own children at his own expense, and 
to allow all parents, worth less than the designated sum, to have 
their children educated at the public's expense. In this way the 
assessor's returns could be made to settle the question as to who are 
and who are not able to educate their own children. 

Reporter. Suppose this plan were to be adopted, what dispo- 
sition could be made of all our public-school property ? 

Mr. Montgomery. Why, sir, without doubt it would all be in 
immediate demand for educational purposes. You must remember 
that the same children who are now attending school would still have 
to be educated. It is true there would not be nearly as many of them 
studying the so-called higher branches, but what would be far bet- 
ter, thousands of children would be perfecting themselves in spell- 
ing, reading, writing, and arithmetic, who are now neglecting these 
essential branches in order to get a mere smattering in drawing, 
music, or the foreign languages. 

Reporter. You will excuse me, Mr. Montgomery, but I do not 
yet see how, under your proposed plan, all our public-school 
grounds, houses, and fuimiture could be made available. All these 
are public property, while your plan would virtually turn over the 
great body of our children to private schools, and this, it seems to 
me, would necessarily leave our public-school property vacant. 

Mr. Montgomery. I was just going on to explain that, under 
the plan suggested, private schools would be vastly multiplied and, 
in-order to carry on these private schools, school-grounds, houses, 
and furniture would be absolutely necessary, so that the public-school 



y6 '■'•Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

property could be easily rented or sold to private-school educators. 
And inasmuch as the most competent and successful educators 
would get the most patronage, they are the persons who could af- 
ford to pay the highest prices for this public-school property ; and, 
therefore, they are the ones who in future would educate our chil- 
dren. 

Reporter. And what disposition would you make of the funds 
arising from the rent or sale of our school property? 

Mr. Montgomery. I would have the rent of all this property, or 
the interest on the money arising from the sale of it, used to pay for 
educating in the proper English branches all such children as could 
not otherwise get such education. There are now upwards of 
$6,000,000 worth of public-school property belonging to this State, 
and there is scarcely a doubt but that the rent of this property, or 
the interest upon its value, would be nearly, if not quite, sufficient 
to give to every child in this State, whose parents are not able to 
educate it, a far better education than can now be obtained, under 
the present system, by the annual expenditure of $3,000,000, in ad- 
dition to the use of this $6,000,000 worth of school property. 

Reporter. If I understand you, then, your opinion is that the 
adoption of the proposed plan would save to the people of this 
State at least $3,000,000 per annum in the single item of school 
taxes, and at the same time vastly improve the educational advan- 
tages of the rising generation ? 

Mr. Montgomery. Yes, sir, that is exactly my position. 

Reporter. Do you find many persons who agree with you in 
these views ? 

Mr. Montgomery. Why, sir, the fact is I seldom find a man 
who dissents from them, when he understands them. As an evi- 
dence of the intrinsic popularity of these views witness the over- 
whelming endorsement they received after full discussion, in the 
old Congregational church in Oakland, at a large meeting presided 
over by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, who, as is 
well known, used his utmost endeavors, even as a presiding officer, 
to defeat their adoption. Witness also the fact that almost every 
leading clergyman, both of Oakland and San Francisco, including 
upwards of twenty Protestant ministers and a number of Jewish 
rabbis, besides many of the prominent officers of every shade of 
politics, as well as lawyers, doctors, and thinking men in all the va- 
rious walks of life, have signed a petition asking that these same 
views be submitted to a vote of the people as a preliminary step 
towards so changing our State Constitution as to make it harmonize 
with them. 

Reporter. If it is not too much of a digression, I should like to 
know what you think of the fear that is sometimes expressed on 
account of the growth of Roman Catholicism in this country, and 
its supposed antagonism to the principles of liberty? 

Mr. Montgomery. Well, sir, I will tell you candidly what I think 
about that. Should the Government of this country ever fall into 
the hands of such Catholics as endorse the present public-school 






Battle Ground on which Educational Question must be Fought. 77 

system other denominations may well tremble for their liberty, as 
you can readily see. This system, as you know, rests upon the as- 
sumption that a majority of the people have a right to determine 
whether any, and, if any, what kind of religion shall be taught in 
the public schools, and to compel the minority to submit to that 
determination. Now let us suppose that this majority should be 
composed of a class of so-called Catholics, who believe in this mon- 
strous doctrine that in educational matters the minority has no rights 
which the majority is bound to respect, will you tell me what is to 
prevent a majority composed of such Catholics as these from forcing 
the children of a helpless minority of Protestants to study the Cath- 
olic catechism in the public schools, provided that by so doing they 
can make themselves popular and put money in their pockets ? 

Reporter. Of course they could not do that without violating 
our present constitution. 

Mr. Montgomery. Very true ; but written constitutions you must 
remember furnish only feeble barriers against unwilling majorities, 
and that for two reasons, namely, such majorities can either change 
the existing constitution or override it with impunity. 

Reporter. Do you really think that the Catholics of whom you 
speak, even if they had the power, would ever so use that power as 
to oppress their Protestant neighbors ? 

Mr. Montgomery. Well, sir, you might trust them, but I could 
not ; and I will tell you why. These same Catholics — if I may call 
them such — are now helping to use exactly this same power for the 
cruel and unjust oppression of other Catholics, as well as non-Catho- 
lics, who do not believe as they do in the immaculate character of the 
present public-school system, and I can scarcely think that they 
would deal any more liberally or more justly with Protestants, 
Jews, or Free-thinkers than they are now dealing with their co-re- 
ligionists, especially when by so doing they would sacrifice both their 
popularity and their self interest. It is true that they can find no 
warrant in the authoritative teachings of their church for forcing 
upon non-Catholic children religious teachings which are repugnant 
to the consciences of their parents ; but neither can they find there 
any warrant for forcing upon the children of either Catholics or non- 
Catholics, in defiance of the protesting consciences of their fathers 
and mothers, the Godless, vicious, and crime-breeding system of 
education which now curses our land from the shores of the Atlantic 
ro the shores of the Pacific. 



, CHAPTER XIII. 

CHE GREAT BATTLE GROUND ON WHICH THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION MUST 
BE FOUGHT. 

It must be clear to every thinking mind that the chief reason 
why the present anti-parental and crime-producing public-school 
system has obtained so strong a hold upon the country is to be 



<j8 ' ' Poison Drops " in the Federal Senate. 

found in a want of united and harmonious action on the part of 
those who see and lament its pernicious influence over the rising- 
generation, but differ as to the precise thing which constitutes the 
fundamental evil of the system, and consequently they equally 
differ as to what ought to be the remedy for said evil. For 
example : Many honest and conscientious people believe that the 
great wrong committed by the political State, through its public- 
school system, consists in its prohibiting the reading of the Bible 
in the public schools, while many others, equally conscientious 
and equally opposed to the present system, believe that the State 
is right in forbidding the use of the Bible in the schools, but that 
it is wrong in allowing "Johnson's Cyclopedia " and certain other 
books, believed to have either a sectarian or a partisan bias, to be 
taught in these schools. Still another class object to the system, 
because of the immoral or incompetent character of many of its 
teachers, or because of the objectionable methods of teaching in 
use in its schools, or because of the commingling of the sexes, or 
for other kindred reasons. 

But to our mind, the chief vice of the system lies in its usurpa- 
tion of parental authority, and in its attempting to do for each 
child, through political agencies, that which can be properly done 
by nobody else in the world, except by its own father and mother. 
We contend that this usurpation of parental authority by the politi- 
cal State is the main trunk out of which naturally grow the other 
evils just mentioned, and that, until this parent tree be rooted up, 
we shall never be able to rid our country of its poisonous branches, 
or their bitter and deadly fruits. 

The question which we are discussing, and the question which 
we urge every intelligent citizen to consider, is not whether the 
Bible ought or ought not to be read in school ; nor whether 
"Johnson's Cyclopedia" is a proper book for school libraries; 
nor whether a particular class of teachers are or are not the best 
adapted to school work ; nor whether the commingling of the sexes 
in the schools has a moralizing or a demoi - alizing tendency ; nor 
whether the teaching of religion and the physical sciences ought or 
ought not to go hand in hand ; nor whether good children, who 
have been carefully and morally trained at home, ought or ought 
not to be sent to the same school with the vicious and depraved, 
with the view of reforming the latter. That there is a wide and an 
honest difference of opinion amongst the American people as to 
these questions no candid and intelligent citizen will deny. And 
accepting this honest difference of opinion as an existing fact, the 



Battle Ground on which Educational Question must be Fought. 79 

question which we how propose to discuss is this : Does it right- 
fully belong to the political State to determine these questions for 
parents and children, and to compel them to submit to its decision ? 
If the political State has the right to decide these questions for par- 
ents, and to enforce obedience to its decisions, even as against 
their judgments and consciences, then it necessarily follows as a 
consequence that in all cases of conflict between the judgment of 
the political State on one side and the judgment of the parent on 
the other, touching any of the above-mentioned questions, it becomes 
the duty of the parent to subject his own judgment to the judgment 
of the State. For surely it cannot be claimed that, where the State 
has the right to command, the citizen has the right to disobey the 
command. But in cases of conflict between his own conscientious 
judgment and the judgment of the State as to the fitness of 
teachers, or books, or school companions, etc., can the parent, 
without moral crime, subject his own judgment to that of the State? 
Suppose, for example, the case of a strictly conscientious Prot- 
estant parent who, by the use of all the lights Within his i"each, has 
come to the conclusion that the constant presence and daily reading 
of the Bible in the school is one of the indispensable means of pre- 
serving the moral purity of his child ; of protecting it against what 
he firmly believes are the dangerous and damnable doctrines of 
atheism ; and of preparing it for a life of virtue, honor, and useful- 
ness in this world, and a life of eternal happiness in the world to 
come ; and suppose the political State, in the exercise of its judgment, 
forbids the Bible to be read in its schools, can such a parent, 
without crime, send his children to such schools, believing in his 
heart that by doing so he is preparing them for a life of sin and 
shame, and an eternity of woe? Be it remembered that we are not 
now discussing the question as to whether the Bible is or is not a 
necessary or a proper book for daily use in the schools, but we are 
discussing the proposition as to the State's jurisdiction to decide that 
question, and to enforce obedience to its decision as against the 
judgment and consciences of parents. If the political State has the 
legitimate power and the rightful jurisdiction to make a binding de- 
cision on this disputed question, then whichever way it decides the 
question — whether it be in favor of or against the use of the Bible 
in the schools — its decision must be equally binding. For the power 
to decide a disputed question, on condition that it be decided one 
particular way and no other, simply means no power to decide the 
question at all. Therefore, if the State has a rightful jurisdiction 
over this question, and should decide to teach the Bible in the schools, 



So " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

to the children of parents who do not believe in the Bible, such 
parents would have no right to complain. For if the parental judg- 
ment and conscience are subordinate and ought to yield to the State's 
judgment and conscience, where would be the ground for complaint? 

Again, if the State may rightfully, and without trenching upon 
the doctrine of religious liberty, forbid the teaching of the Bible in 
the schools, to the children of parents whose judgments and con- 
sciences demand such teaching, or may enforce the teaching of the 
Bible to the children of those whose judgments and consciences are 
opposed thereto, it then follows, as a matter of course, that the 
State must have jurisdiction to decide as to which one of all the 
various versions and translations of the Bible is the correct one. In 
other words, it must have jurisdiction to determine which one of the 
various books known as the " Bible " is entitled to be called by that 
name. Not only that, but if the State can, without encroaching 
upon the just liberty of conscience, decide what book is the Bible, 
and then enforce the teaching of such Bible in the schools, against 
the judgments and consciences of the parents of the children who 
are so taught, it must also have jurisdiction to decide, as between 
conflicting interpretations, what is the meaning of the various texts 
of the Bible, for it would be as absurd and as barren of good results 
to simply teach the words of the Bible to a child, while leaving it 
in ignorance as to their signification, as it would be to teach the same 
child to repeat, in a parrot-like manner, the words of its arithmetic 
or of its grammar, while allowing it to grope in darkness as to the 
real scientific meaning which those words were intended to conve}'. 

But if the State has the rightful jurisdiction to decide pro or con 
upon the authenticity of the Scriptures, and also to interpret them 
for its schools, and in defiance of the judgment and consciences of 
parents to teach the Scriptures, as it interprets them, to the rising 
generation, does not this of itself involve the right — within the limits 
of its educational domain — to establish a State religion? We can 
see no escape from an affirmative answer to this proposition. In 
other words, we maintain that it is impossible, logically, to justify 
our present anti-parental State-controlled educational system, with- 
out the maintenance of principles which would justify the political 
State in establishing, at public expense, a State church, and teaching 
to the rising generation a State religion, and compelling every child 
to learn and practise such teachings. If the true and just relations 
between the political State and its citizens are such that, in settling 
the question as to the kind of education that shall be given to the 
children of the latter, it is the right of the State to command and 



Battle Ground on which Edticational Question must be Fought. 81 

the duty of the parent to obey, then it follows that if we were 
citizens of some barbarous country, where the political State 
requires every child to learn and practice the doctrine of snake-wor- 
ship, it would become our bounden duty to allow our children to be 
taught these vile and revolting doctrines. 

Here again we insist upon its being borne in mind that we are not 
discussing the question as to what kind or whether any religion 
ought or ought not to be taught to children ; but we are only con- 
sidering the question as to whether or not it rightfully belongs to the 
"political State" to determine that question, and in doing so, to 
override the judgments and consciences of the fathers and mothers 
of children. 

It seems to us that, from the innermost depths of every human 
heart, not wholly dead to the noblest impulses of man's nature, there 
rises up one spontaneous universal protest against this vile and 
monstrous usui-pation of parental authority by the political State. 
And we firmly believe that the only thing necessary is that the peo- 
ple of this country, of all creeds and parties, be brought fairly and 
squarely face to face with this deadly foe to their liberties, so as to 
see the horrid monster in all its hideous deformity, and that they will 
then promptly stamp it out of existence. Therefore, in our humble 
opinion, the true and proper course to be pursued by the friends of 
educational reform is to keep prominently before the people as the 
fundamental, the vital issue, this question, namely : Shall the parent 
or the political State determine for a child who shall be its teacher, 
its companions, and what books it shall or shall not study? Let all 
other issues be made subordinate to this. As long as we make our 
chief fight on the question of Bible or no Bible, religion or no i*elig- 
ion, division of public-school funds or no division, mixed or separate 
schools for girls and boys, and similar questions concerning which 
men will differ — and as things are, naturally and honestly differ — so 
long will there be contention and strife amongst the real friends of 
educational reform. Each of these contending factions is willing to 
tee, and does see, the evils of an anti-parental system of education 
when that system strikes at his own rights, as he understands those 
rights ; but is slow to see the same evils when they only affect the 
rights of his neighbors, who choose to exercise their rights in a 
manner different from himself. 

This should not be so. If we expect the assistance of our neigh- 
bors in our struggles for our own parental rights, we must be will- 
ing to assist those neighbors in securing theirs. And we must not 
demand, as a condition precedent, that these neighbors shall agree 



82 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

to exercise their parental rights just as we do ours, because this 
would be as intolerant and oppressive, and as opposed to parental 
liberty, as is the present public-school system ; or l-ather it would be 
simply a new application of the same system. It would simply be 
the taking of the martyred victim who is being roasted on one side, 
and turning the other side to the fire. 

We must realize the fact that in union there is strength, and that 
we can only have union by being just and liberal towards each other. 
While standing firmly by our own rights and the rights of our chil- 
dren, we must realize and act upon the fact that our neighbors' 
rights and our neighbors' children are as dear to them as ours are to 
us. And however widely mistaken we may believe our neighbors 
to be in their manner of educating their children, we should remem- 
ber that it is not our business, nor our right, to force our views upon 
them any more than it is their business to force their views upon 
us. It is not for their children but for our own that we shall be 
called upon to render an account to that God who gave them. 

If, then, we would work for union, if we would work for success 
in the cause of educational liberty, let us lay aside all those side 
issues which every parent should settle according to his own judg- 
ment and conscience, and let us raise aloft the broad banner of par- 
ental rights and equal educational liberty, without distinction of 
creed, part) , or calling. Under this banner we can conquer ; under 
any other I believe we shall surely fail. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

A NON-SECTARIAN PLATFORM OF EDUCATIONAL PRINCIPLES ALMOST UNANI- 
MOUSLY ENDORSED BY THOSE WHO HAVE STUDIED IT. 

PROPOSITIONS. 



Parents are bound, by the law of Nature, (each according to his 
ability) , to properly feed, clothe, and educate their own children, 
and unwilling parents should be compelled, by appropriate legisla- 
tion, to discharge these duties. 

II. 

It is a public duty to assist, at public expense, in furnishing the 
necessary means wherewith to properly feed, clothe, and educate 



A non- Sectarian Platform of Educational Principles. 83 

children whose parents are unable to so feed, clothe, and educate 

them. 

III. 

No citizen of this State should ever be taxed for the feeding, 
clothing, or educating of children — not his own — whose parents are 
amply able to feed, clothe, and educate them. 

IV. 

All such parents as are neither mentally nor morally unfit to have 
the custody of children are entitled, and in duty bound, to select for 
the education of their own children schools wherein they believe that 
neither the teachers, the associations, nor the kind pf instruction 
given, will seriously endanger either their health, their lives, or their 
morals, but will best promote their temporal and eternal welfare. 



Neither the State, nor any municipal or other government organized 
under its authority, should ever force upon the child of any parent — not 
legally adjudged mentally or morally unfit to discharge the duties of 
the parental office — any particular teacher, book, or system of relig- 
ious or non-religious instruction against the conscientious objections 
of such parent. 

VI. 

Tuition, when at public expense, should embrace a good common 
English and business education, added to such a thorough training in 
•one or more of the mechanic arts, or the manufacturing, domestic, or 
productive industries, as will best prepare youth for the practical 
business of self-support, but should not extend to the merely orna- 
mental or more abstruse arts or sciences, except in a limited class of 
cases (to be provided for by law) as a reward for exalted merit, when 
coupled with a high order of talent and a special aptitude for such 
arts or sciences. 



The whole business of educating and training the young should, 
like other professions, be open to pi-ivate enterprise and free compe- 
tition : Provided, That the State should establish and maintain such 
necessary educational institutions as private enterprise shall fail to 
establish and maintain ; and every parent or guardian entitled to 
have his or her child or ward educated at public expense should 
select for such purpose his own school, and the teacher or principal 
of such school should be paid periodically for teaching such pupil a 



84 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

compensation, the maximum of which shall be fixed by law, which 
compensation should be proportionate to the progress made by the 
pupil during such period of tuition in the legally appointed secular 
branches. .Said progress to be ascertained by examiners duly elected 
or appointed in such manner as may be provided by law ; but no 
religious tuition which may be given in any such school should be 
at public expense or subject to the supervision of said examiners. 

HOW INTELLIGENT CITIZENS OF ALL CLASSES REGARD THE ABOVE PROP- 
OSITIONS. 

The friends and opponents of the foregoing propositions held a 
meeting in the city of Oakland on the evening of October 6, 1S79, 
for the purpose of considering their merits. In referring to that 
meeting, and its action touching said propositions, a leading Oakland 
daily, the Evening Tribime, in its issue of October 10th, among 
other things said : 

" A large audience gathered last Monday evening at the old 
Congregational church building, to hear the Hon. Zach. Mont- 
gomery discuss the demerits of the Public-School System of the 
United States. It was generally expected and hoped that the 
Rev. Horatio Stebbins, D. D., of San Francisco, would be present 
and take issue with the views advanced by Mr. Montgomery, but 
the reverend gentleman did not put in an appearance. Fred. M. 
Campbell, State Superintendent-elect, at the request of Mr. Mont- 
gomery, presided. * * * In support of the two principal opin- 
ions, namely, the pernicious influence of our present system of pub- 
lic instruction, and the right and duty of the parent to select and 
control the education of the child, as well as clothe and feed it, he 
advanced seven propositions, which, if carried out practically, he 
believed would prove vastly superior to the present system. He 
was frequently plied with questions, put by persons in the audience, 
to which he responded with alacrity. A vote was taken on the several 
propositions advanced by Mr. Montgomery to ascertain the sense of 
the audience in regard to the subject, and invariably the result showed 
that the speaker was sustained by the majority of his hearers." 

As another evidence of the intrinsic popularity of the foregoing 
platform of principles it may be stated that a petition asking that a law 
be passed to submit said platform to a vote of the people, to test the 
sense of the public upon the question of so amending the California 
State constitution as to bring it into harmony with said platform, was 
endorsed by nearly every leading citizen of the cities of San Francisco 
and Oakland who examined the question. Among these signers 
were included the most prominent ministers of almost every religious 
denomination, as well as non-religionists of the different schools of 



A. non- Sectarian Platform of Educational Principles. 85 

thought. Indeed, it is a noteworthy fact that amongst these signers 
was the Hon. J. F. Swift, the able and distinguised Republican 
nominee for Governor of California in this year of our Lord 1886. 
A bill was introduced in the California State Senate, in 1880, by 
Hon. B. F. Langford, providing for carrying out the objects of said 
petition. It was referred to the Senate Committee on Education, 
came back with a divided report, was placed on the regular files of 
business, but the session — being by the constitution restricted to sixty 
.days — expired by limitation before the bill could be reached for 
action. It is a well-known fact, however, that many of the ablest 
and most influential members of that body stood ready to give it 
their cordial support. 

The following are but a few of the prominent and influential names 
appended thereto, to wit: 

Hon. James T. Farley, (U. S. Senator.) Hon. E. W. McKinstry, (Supreme Judge.) 

Hon. S. B. McK.ee, (Supreme Judge.) Hon. A. M. Cbane, (Superior Judge.) 

(Several other Superior Judges.) 
Hon. John R. Glascock, (M. 0.) Hon. W. W. Foote, (R. R. Commissioner.) 

Hon. J. F. Swift. Hon. J. A. Stanley. 

Dr. S. Merritt. F. Delger. 

Rt. Rev. "W. I. Kipp, (Episc. Bishop of Cal.) Rev. W. A. Scott, (Presbyterian.) 

Rev. J. K. McLean, (Congregationalist.) Rev. G. S. Abbott, (Baptist.) 

Rev. O. Kenrick, (Campbellite or Christian.) Rev. L. Hamilton, (Independent.) 

Rev. Thos. Guard, (Methodist.) Rev. J. Fuendeling, (Reformed Ger. Ch.) 

Rev. F. W. Fischer, (Evangelical Ass'n.) Rev. G. Muehlsteph, (German Lutheran,) 

And fourteen other prominent Protestant clergymen of San Francisco and Oakland belonging to 
the different denominations just enumerated. 

AIko Most Rev. J. S. Alemany, of San Francisco, and several other Roman Catholic Clergymen. 

Also Dr. D. H. Vidaver and Dr. A. J. Messing, Jewish rabbis. 

Rev. Doctor John LeConte, while president of the California 
State University, an eminent Presbyterian divine, after reading the 
author's views as expressed in " Poison Fountain" — without fully 
committing himself to these views — wrote as follows : 

" There can be no dottbt that the gradital impairment and loss 
of parental authority and influence is one of the most serious 
and momentous evils which besets the American civilization. It 
undermines the very foundations of the family — the essential 
unit of society." 

Rev. Dr. Joseph LeConte, likewise a distinguished Presbyterian 
minister, a professor of the same University and a scientist and au- 
thor of world-wide celebrity, addressed the writer a letter, saying, 
among other things : '■'•I fully coizcur with you in your view that 
any edttcation which weakens the family tie strikes at the very 
foundation of society, and no amount of good hi other directions 
can atone for this greatest of all evils. I filly concur with you 



86 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

also in your opposition to compulsory State education. This 
certainly strikes at the integrity of the family , for it makes chil- 
dren ' the wards of the State.' I fully believe, also, that private 
schools, each parent choosing his own, furnish a better education, 
all things considered, than any public-school system." 

Rev. A. Adams, of Los Angeles, (Protestant,) writing to the 
author, says: "/ am struck with the similarity of our views on 
the school question, and bid you Godspeed in propagating your 
views as contamed in the ptcblication before me. I see that you, 
a Catholic, and I, a Protestant, are united here." 

Dr. Thomas W. Dawson, of Downey City, (non-religionist,) con- 
cludes a letter to the author as follows : " I honestly believe that your 
array of facts and reaso?zing are simply unanswerable." 

Mr. W. D. Blackwell, of Trenton, New Jersey, wrote to the au- 
thor, saying : ii Iam a Presbyterian, but you and myself are in per- 
fect harmony and accord upon this all-important school question. ,"" 

Mr. W. L. Prather, a well-known citizen and notary public of 
Oakland, a strict member of the Methodist Church, concluded a 
letter to the author as follows : " Truth is the invincible weapon 
that you have so efficie?ztly e?nployed ; a weapon that has already 
and will contiizue to work as leaven in the social and political 
lump until, as I trust, the whole shall become leavened." 

Hon. J. Burckhalter, of Santa Rosa, Cal., a prominent lawyer 
and staunch member of the Campbellite (or Christian) Church, ad- 
dressed a letter to the writer on the subject of his educational fight, 
concluding thus : " I hope yozi will have courage and go on in the 
good work tmtil success shall have crowned your efforts." 

Mr. George Washington, the grand-nephew and nearest living 
relative of the illustrious Father of his Country, wrote to the author 
from Center View, Mo., April 13th, 18S0: 

" Please send me a copy of your celebrated pamphlet against pub- 
lic schools. I have read copious extracts from the same, but want a 
copy in full for re-reading and reference. It will keep. I am as much 
opposed to the system as yourself, but have not the ability to express 
my objections as clearly, pointedly, and forcibly as you have yours. 
k> Respectfully, 

" George Washington." 

TWO MOST SIGNIFICANT FACTS — SUBSTANTIAL ENDORSEMENTS BY A CONGRE- 
GATIONAL STATE COUNCIL AND A PRESBYTERIAN STATE SYNOD. 

It is well known that the Congregational clergymen of California 
are mostly New England men, and it is equally well known that such 
^f them as have investigated the subject are almost, if not quite, a unit 



A non- Sectarian Platform of Educational Principles. 87 

in their endorsement of our educational platform. As an evidence 
of this, in 1879 a California State Council of Congregational clergy- 
men convened in San Francisco appointed Rev. Dr. J. K. McLean, 
one of its most distinguished members — and a signer of the above- 
mentioned petition embodying our educational platform — to prepare 
a document touching the school question. At an adjourned meet- 
ing, which convened in Oakland October 6th, 1880, the Rev. Doc- 
tor made a carefully-prepared report, entitled — 

"the proper limits of state education." 

This report was in substantial accord with the principles set forth 
in said platform. 

In proof of this, only a few quotations will be necessary. For 
example, this report says : 

" The State should limit itself in the field of education as it 
does in all the other fields it occupies ; that is, it may provide, and 
ought to provide, elementary teaching for those who would not 
otherwise get it ; but only on the same ground on which it pro- 
vides bread and clothing and shelter and medicine for those who 
would not otherwise get them." Again, 

" State education should be limited certainly to what is known 
as common-school instruction ; possibly to the three elementary 
branches, reading, writing, and arithmetic." Again, 

" A rapidly increasing number of people in the churches, perceiv- 
ing the impossibility of harmonizing opinions into any sort of working 
agreement as to- what shall be taught, as to how it shall be taught, 
and by what kind of persons it shall be taught, are arriving at the 
conclusion that the wiser way, the jttster way, the far more satis- 
factory way, will be no longer to put our education money into a 
common fund, except so far as to guard the State against utter illit- 
eracy ; but for the party of each opinion to be allowed to keep its 
higher educational money in its own hands, and to expend it in 
such manner as shall seem to itself good. This will be for the in- 
terest of State harmony no less than for the interest of education 
itself. Then the Catholic father can eiijoy his indefeasible right 
to educate his child after his own judgment and conscience ; the 
infidel father can enjoy his indefeasible right, and the Protest- 
ant Christian his." Again, the Rev. Doctor's report says : 

" As matters now stand, the non-religionist party are, in some of 
our States, oppressors. They are refusing the religionist liberty of 
conscience as touching a most important and far-reaching matter. 
The non-religionist exacts money from the religionist for purposes 
of a common education, and then refuses the religionist any voice or 
influence in the management of that education. For me, a relig- 
ionist, believing that a certain moral culture should be joined to all 
mental culture ; believing, indeed, that the two cannot by any pos- 
sibility be separated ; believing that the absence of positive moral 



88 " -Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

culture is equivalent to a culture in //^morality — just as the absence 
of certain elements in the atmosphere leaves it poisonously noxious — 
for me to insist that some appliance* for moral culture shall be in- 
cluded in our common system of education is bigotry. There must 
be two taxes and one voice. I can pay, but can have no say. There 
is no bigotry in the non-religionist having what he wants at the com- 
mon expense, but for the religionist to claim some allowance for 
his wants is the essence of bigotry. 

So great is the divergence of opinion as to systems of education, 
so impossible of remediation does this divergency appear to be, that 
very many of us are beginning to think that the only peaceable and 
harmonious way must be to follow the example set in early days in 
the matter of State religion — for the State simply to protect all par- 
ties in their opinions, and relegate to each parent the business of 
providing his children with such higher education as his judgment 
may suggest or his conscience dictate. The same principle, pre- 
cisely, appears to underlie both matters, that of church and 
State, and that of school and State" 

This able report of the Rev. Doctor's was pi'omptly adopted and 
published to the world as expressing the views of the Council. Sub- 
sequently, a Presbyterian State Synod, held in San Francisco, ap- 
pointed Rev. Dr. Scott, one of its ablest members, (who was also 
one of the signers of our said petition), to prepare a report on the 
same subject. His report, when prepared, was also in perfect har- 
mony with said petition and with the views proclaimed by the Con- 
gregational Council. Rev. Dr. Scott's report was also adopted by 
nearly, if not quite, a unanimous vote of the Synod. 

, The important significance of the action thus taken by these two 
highly- intelligent and influential bodies of men in favor of parental 
rights and equal liberty in educational matters can scarcely be over- 
estimated. 

It would be easy to fill page after page with the endorsements from 
distinguished Protestant, Jewish, and non-religious sources, but it 
is now in order to show that our non-sectarian platform of educa- 
tional principles is as acceptable to intelligent and fair-minded Cath- 
olics as it is to non-Catholics. 

For example : Archbishop Seghers, writing from Portland, Ore- 
gon, March 26th, 1883, among other things, says : 

" The logic with which you grapple with the educational prob- 
4 ' lem is irresistible, and, as the champion of the only system of edu- 
" cation that can be reared on principles of truth and justice, you 
41 are simply admirable. When I read your thoughts I feel that 
" they are the outcome of long, careful, patient study and of con- 
" scientious convictions." 



A non- Sectarian Platform of Educational Principles. 89 

Bishop Grace, of St. Paul, Minnesota, in February, 1881, writing 
to the author upon the subject of his magazine, then being published, 
among other things, said : 

" You have judged wisely in making your magazine non-sectarian 
" and appealing to the common sense and calm judgment of the 
" American people at large. I have long since been convinced that 
M this was the proper course from the beginning. By making the 
" movement appear a strictly Catholic movement, upon Catholic 
" grounds, we forfeited the sympathy and co-operation of the 
" commu7iities of other creeds, and by our over-heated zeal we 
" alienated from us the liberal-minded among our better citizens 
" in general." 

Subsequently, the same eminent prelate wrote to the author, say- 
ing: 

" If you need any words of mine to encourage you in the course 
you are pursuing, you have them from my heart. Every day con- 
vinces me more and more that the ground you have taken in defence 
of the rights of the family against the encroachments of the State is 
really the ground upon which the opposition to the State school sys- 
tem should have been based from the beginning. Natural rights, as 
involved in this question, no legitimate Government will infringe, or 
allow to be infringed, upon due proof. The law of majorities, the 
voxpopuli, has no weight against the claims of natural family rights." 

More than a dozen other distinguished American bishops and 
archbishops, including Archbishop Elder, of Cincinnati ; Bishop 
Spalding, of Peoria; Bishop Ryan, of Buffalo, N. Y.; Bishop 
Gilmoure, of Cleveland, Ohio; Bishop Marty, of Dakota ; Bishop 
Seidenbush, of Minnesota; Bishop Fink, of Leavenworth ; Bishop 
Hogan, of Kansas City, and all the Pacific Coast bishops, have 
joined in the substantial endorsement of our aforesaid educational 
platform ; and, last but not least, the great Cardinal Manning, of 
England, concluded an article on the school question (published in 
the Nineteenth Century for April, 1883) by saying that he could 
not do better than repeat the above letter of Bishop Grace, commend- 
ing, as we have just seen, in the strongest terms the author's position. 

The truth is that wherever, and whenever, and by whomsoever, 
our platform of educational principles has been studied in connec- 
tion with our compilation of criminal statistics, it has been almost 
invariably endorsed. 

At least we feel warranted in saying that wherever the school 
question has been carefully considered from the stand-point presented 
in these pages, the number of those who endorse our platform, 
compared with the number who reject it, stands in the proportion 
of not less than 



go " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 



six TO ONE. 

As a fair test of the truth of this proposition it may be stated 
that, in the month of June, 1881, it was announced in the Oakland 
papers that the writer would deliver two pay lectures in Cameron 
Hall, Oakland, to wit: on the evenings of Friday and Saturday, 
July 1st and 2d; the first lecture to be in answer to the question, 
" Which of the two is the more plausible theory, namely, that man 
is an improved monkey, or that the monkey is an improved man?" 
and printed on the backs of the tickets of admission was the follow- 
ing, as indicating the programme and the nature of the subject for 
Saturday evening's lecture, to wit : 

CHANCE FOR A PRIZE. 

On the evening of the second lecture a prize, consisting of twenty 
five per cent, of the net proceeds of both lectures, will be awarded 
to the person present who shall, in the fewest words, not exceeding 
one hundred in number, furnish in writing the best original an- 
swer, with the chief reasons therefor, to the following question 
to wit : 

In cases where, on the one hand, the judgment and conscience of 
a proper parent, fit to be guardian of his own child, and on the 
other, the judgment and conscience of the school officials and of the 
general public differ, irreconcilably, as to whether said child, when 
of school age, can, with safety to its health, its life, or its morals, 
be educated in such schools as the public has provided for that pur- 
pose, whose judgment and conscience ought to control — that of the 
parent or that of the school officials and the general public ? 

Said award will be made immediately before the second lecture, 
by an umpire to be chosen by the competing respondents, whose 
answers must all be handed to the doorkeeper by 7^- o'clock. 

The answer taking the prize will constitute the subject of the sec- 
ond lecture. 

The lectures came oft' as appointed, and seven competing answers 
to the foregoing questions were handed in. Hon. J. C. Martin was 
elected umpire to pass upon the merits of the several answers ; and 
upon his request to have two assistants to aid him in arriving at a 
correct conclusion, he was authorized by a unanimous vote to select 
such assistants, whereupon he selected Dr. D. Skilling and Mr. 
John Lynch. After a careful examination and comparison of the 
various answers, the preference was, by unanimous consent, given 
to that of Hon. A. R. Redman, which is as follows: 

The judgment of the parent must control, because — 

1st. The instinctive love and mutual affection of parent and child 



A non- Sectarian Platform of Educational Principles. 91 

afford assurances of protection for the latter, and are elements which 
cannot be alienated, transferred, or divested. 

2d. These natural instincts and the duty of the parent to support 
the child, the right to enjoy its services and companionship, cannot 
co-exist with a higher authority resting elsewhere to ' ' educate " it, 
without an irrepressible conflict subversive of these natural and in- 
alienable duties and obligations, which are based upon the laws of 
nature and of God. 

(Signed) A. R. Redman. 

The following are the other six competing answers, with the sig- 
natures of their respective authors appended : 

The judgment of the school officials and the general public 
(should control), " because the school officials and general public, 
being equally interested in all the children, decide unselfishly." 

2d. The motto of the school officials and general public is, The 
greatest good to the greatest number. 

3d. The school which the public has provided is the result of the 
aggregated wisdom and virtue of the State or community. 

4th. The school officials and general public believe that virtue 
must be brought in contact with vice both to strengthen virtue and 
to weaken vice. 

5th. The public school proposes a sufficiently high but general 
development for all. 

(Signed) J. C. Lawson. 

The judgment of the parent (should control), because he " is a 
proper parent fit to be gttardian of his own child" none feeling 
the same interest in the child as the parent, and none so able to form 
its character. 

2d. Because the parent is directly responsible to God for the proper 
training of the child, and no one other than the parent should have 
control or assume the responsibility that rests only on the parent. 
(Signed) W. L. Prather. 

A proper parent should control the education of his child. His 
judgment concerning the mental, physical, and moral needs of his 
own offspring, with whom he is in daily contact, must be better 
than that of paid officials, who, in handling an incongruous mass of 
immature minds, can know little of each individual temperament, 
and in many instances cares less. The sound judgment of the par- 
ent admitted, his conscience would naturally dictate to him his duty. 
He should place his child under the best moral and social influence, 
and of them he is the best judge. 

(Signed) J. L. Abell. 

The parent, (should control) , otherwise would he violate the law 
guaranteeing liberty, and providing that no citizen should be de- 
prived of liberty except by due process. Naturally the parent is 
the best judge, knowing the child best, and he would from every 



92 tk Poison Drops" i:i the Federal Senate. 

consideration care most, and certainly the community's real interests 
are never jeopardized by the true interest of one of its citizens. The 
great interest of the child is not considered by the people or their repre- 
sentatives — the greatest and best interest of the soul. The parent 
looks to this, if a proper parent. 

(Signed) J. C. Kendrick, M. D. 

God has made it both the right and the duty of the parent to sup- 
port and educate his child, nor can any power justly deprive him of 
this right or release him from this duty. The duty and the right 
are inseparable. 

If the State can of right prescribe the schools and education, it 
can of right prescribe its religion. This would be anti-American 
and subversive of our free institutions. 

(Signed) H. H. Hendrix. 

None should come between my child and me, or dictate how I 
should educate or raise it ; for my heart alone will grieve if false 
teachings lead it astray, and my soul alone is responsible to the 
eternal God for His charge. My money is mi?ie, and it is but just 
that I use it for my child's interest in schools I approve. 

Education without religion is as bad as total ignorance. Better 
a godly citizen than a classical knave ; political mills are not places 
wherein my child can learn honesty, morality, and virtue. 
(Signed) M. E. L., 

375 Fourth Street, City. 

It will be observed that there is nothing either in the question 
itself, or in any of the foregoing answers, in the least tinged with 
what is usually called sectarian bias. Six of the competing parties 
were either Protestants or non-religionists, and two of the umpires 
were Protestants and one Catholic. Taking both the seven com- 
petitors and the three umpires, they make ten in all, and represent 
almost that many shades of religious belief; and yet — as will be 
seen by reading these answers, and the names of the umpires 
appended to the award — they stood solid for parental rights, nine 
against one. It is our solemn conviction that whenever this ques- 
tion can be brought squarely before the people, so that they can vote 
upon it understandingly, more than nine to one will vote against 
this monstrous usurpation, whereby parents are robbed of their 
natural and God-given rights in so sacred a matter as that of select- 
ing schools for their own children. 

There is but one of the foregoing answers upon which we deem 
it necessary to comment, because each of the others seems to 
embody, in different forms of expression, the same sound doctrine 
as that contained in the one to which the umpires gave the pref- 



A non- Sectarian Platform of Educational Principles. 93 

erence. The answer to which we cannot subscribe is that of Mr. 
Lawson. 

He maintains that where there is a conflict between the judgment 
and conscience of a proper parent on the one side, and the judg- 
ment and conscience of the school officials and the general public 
on the other, as to whether a child can with safety to its health, its 
life, and its morals be sent to such school as the public has estab- 
lished, the judgment of the school officials and the general public 
should control. And his reasons are : First, " because the school 
officials and the general public, being equally interested in all the 
children, decide unselfishly." 

Now, in the first place, we deny the truth of this statement, 
because, unless the school officials are all old bachelors, or other- 
wise childless persons, it is impossible for them to be " equally 
interested in all the children.'''' In other words, it is in the very 
nature of things impossible for the parents of children to feel no 
more interest in the proper education of their own than in that of 
their neighbor's children or the children of strangers. Should the 
school officials happen to be childless persons, it may then be pos- 
sible for them to feel " equally interested in all the children ; " but, in 
such a case, we contend that as a rule they could not feel that 
degree of interest in any of the children which the person ought 
to feel whose duty it is to select a school for the protection of the 
health, the life, and the morals of a child. To show, in a few words, 
the utter fallacy of Mr. Lawson's first argument, let us supj:>ose 
that instead of a young child, whose health and morals ai-e at stake, 
we take the case of a young swine, whose health and life alone are 
involved, and we will ask the question whether that young swine 
ought for safety to be left to the care of its own mother, who feels 
for it an instinctive affection that no other swine can, or whether 
it would be better to take it from its own mother and intrust it to 
the tender mercies of a herd of strange hogs ? Most unquestionably, 
according to Mr. Lawson's first proposition, the pig would be better 
taken care of by the general herd, because they would take just as 
much interest in that as they would in any other strange pig. Yet 
we venture the opinion that were Mr. Lawson engaged in the busi- 
ness of raising hogs instead of raising babies, he would rather trust 
the care and management — and educational control, if you please — 
of his young pigs to their own mothers than to any or all the other 
swine in Christendom ; not certainly upon the ground that she felt 
an equal interest in all the pigs in the country as in her own, but 
upon the very ground that she did not, because if those affections, 



.94. " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

and that interest which ought to be lavished upon a dozen of her 
own, were divided in equal parts between them and a thousand 
others it is very certain that her own would suffer. The God of 
nature, in His infinite wisdom, has ordained that the educational 
control of the child should be entrusted to those who feel for it far 
more than such a general interest as is equally applicable to all 
the children in the community. He who is to select a school for 
a child with a view of preserving its health, its life, and its morals, 
ought to be a person who loves such child with a parent's love ; 
and nobody but a parent can do that. He ought to be a person 
who has a parent's opportunities of knowing both the mental and 
physical peculiarities of the child, because a strong, robust child 
might with safety endure a school atmosphere which would be cer- 
tain death to another of a more delicate constitution. 

Again, a cross, stern,,and severe teacher, such as would be an 
absolute necessity for a certain class of rough, uncouth, incorrigible 
youths, would often so unnerve the child of a timid, sensitive nature 
as to destroy its health, inspire it with horror for the very name of 
school, and place it beyond the range of possibility for it to learn. 

Again, he who is to control the child's education ought to feel, 
as only a parent can feel, that his own individual happiness, as well 
as that of the child, will largely depend upon the kind of teachers 
and companions he selects for such a child. He should feel that 
either the death or moral ruin, or the unfitting of such child for 
any honest pursuit within its reach, will result in an irreparable 
disaster to himself as well as the child. 

As suggested in one of the foregoing answers, the child in the 
hands of its parents is a sacred trust from the Almighty, and He 
has imposed, even in this life, terrible penalties upon the violators 
of this trust. In the language of an immutable law, which He has 
indelibly written on the parental heart, He has plainly said to every 
father and mother to whom He has given a child : " This child is 
My handiwork. It bears My image. It is a jewel more precious 
than all the treasures of earth. At thy solicitation I intrust it to thy 
keeping, in order that thou mayest feed and clothe and train it up in 
the way it should go. I charge thee to shield it from sickness and 
death, and the still more terrible curse of crime against My laws." 

In order to make the faithful discharge of this trust a pleasing duty, 
rather than an irksome task, the Almighty has given to you — fathers 
and mothers — a fond and ardent love for your own child, such as 
other parents may bear towards their children, but such as no other 
human being in this world can ever bear towards yours. He has, 






A non-Sectarian Platform of Educational Principles. 95 



moreover, implanted in the heart of your child the seeds of filial 
love for you, such as other children may feel for their own parents, 
but such as none but your children can ever feel fox you. 

He has likewise sealed and confirmed your parental authority 
over your child by commanding it, under the severest penalties, to 
honor and obey you, its father and mother. Thus armed with a 
God-given authority, and charged with the God-imposed duty of se- 
lecting for your own child a proper school, if, in deference to the 
wishes, or in obedience to the commands, of the outer world, you 
allow your child to be hurried to an untimely grave or plunged into 
the polluting mire of iniquity, it is not the oztter world — the usurper 
of your sacred office — but you, yozirself together with your child, 
who must chiefly suffer the teiTible consequences of such usurpa- 
tion. 

Yours are the sleepless nights that must be spent in watching by 
the bedside of your sick or dying child, and yours the bleeding 
heart that must writhe in agony as you look upon the lifeless form 
of that beautiful cherub who has fallen a victim to the poisoned air 
of an over-crowded school-room, or other death-producing cause, to 
which, in defiance of your own solemn convictions of duty, you 
have exposed it, because the public-school officials demanded the 
sacrifice ; or worse. 

Still, should your idolized son, or your once spotless daughter. 
in consequence of the false maxims or bad example of an immoral 
teacher, or the vile associations of wicked school-mates, become a 
burning disgrace to your name, it is you who will have to hang your 
head in unutterable shame and confusion, while the very persons 
at whose bidding you have allowed your child's mind and heart to 
be poisoned, and its doom of degradation and misery sealed for 
time and eternity, will shun you as they would shun a leper ; and 
they will point you out to the passing stranger as an " old fellow 
who has a son in the penitentiary," or " a daughter in a house of 
ill-fame." And on the great accounting day, what excuse can you 
frame for so base a betrayal of your high trust? 

Mr. Lawson's second reason assigned in support of his theory, 
that the parent's judgment and conscience ought to yield to the judg- 
ment and conscience of the public-school officials and the general 
public, is "because the motto of the school officials and the general 
public is, The greatest good to the greatest number." 

Now, if we have been successful — as we think we have — in show- 
ing that God Almighty has so formed human nature, and so estab- 
lished the relations between parent and child, that, as a general 



96 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

rule, the greatest good both of children and parents requires that the 
parental judgment and conscience should control in the matter of 
selecting schools for children, then we think that the said second 
reason is already fully answered. 

Mr. Lawson's third reason is that the school which the public has 
provided is the result of the aggregated wisdom and virtue of the 
State or community. We think that a little reflection, and a careful 
inspection of facts and figures, such as we have carefully collected 
from the United States Census Reports and placed before our readers, 
will convince any candid mind that, as a general proposition, " the 
school which the public has provided " comes much nearer being 
" the result of the aggregated " folly and vice of " the State or com- 
munity" than it does to being its aggregated wisdom and virtue. 

We would, moreover, inquire what does, or can, the aggregated 
wisdom of the State know about the individual tastes, dispositions, 
inclinations, mental, moral, and physical peculiarities of your little 
seven or ten-year-old girl, whose very existence is not known to more 
than one out of ten thousand of the voters who are supposed to rep- 
resent "the aggregated wisdom of the State?" And who, we ask, 
if in search of knowledge touching those very characteristics and 
peculiarities of the child which ought to be considered when select- 
ing the school wherein her whole future life is to be shaped, would 
not infinitely rather consult the father and mother than all "the 
aggregated wisdom " of the outside world ? We would much 
rather trust to the individual wisdom of a mother goose for the 
proper management and training of her own goslings than to the 
aggregated wisdom of all the other geese in Christendom. 

But Mr. Lawson's fourth reason for depriving parents of the right 
to exercise their own judgments and consciences in the matter of 
selecting schools for their children, although in perfect harmony both 
with the theory and the practical workings of our present public- 
school system, is certainly a most startling one. He says : "The 
school officials and general public believe that virtue must be brought 
in contact with vice both to strengthen virtue and to weaken vice." 
If this be sound philosophy, then should every young man who 
aspires to a reputation for strict and sterling integrity first serve his 
time in the company of pick-pockets, burglars, forgers, counterfeit- 
ers, garroters, thieves, and robbers. And no young lady should be 
considered strong in the virtue of purity until she has first waltzed 
with a thousand lascivious rakes and served an apprenticeship in a 
bawdy-house. 

It is evident that Pope, the poet, was not versed in the Lawsonian 



A non- Sectarian Platform of Edztcalional Principles. 97 

philosophy, or he never would have written those oft-quoted lines 

saying : 

"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien 
As to be hated needs but to be seen ; 
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 

Neither did Lord Byron have the least idea of the great advan- 
tage which a virtuous boy derives from vile associations, nor how 
easy it is for a young lad to grow strong in virtue amidst scenes of 
vice, when he penned the words — 

"Ah vice ! how soft are thy voluptuous ways ! 

When boyish blood is mantling, who can 'scape 
The fascination of thy magic gaze ? 

We wonder if it was'because of his contact with vice and the 
vicious enemies of our Saviour that the Apostle Peter became so 
strong in virtue that at the voice of a servant handmaid he denied 
his Divine Master and swore that he knew not the man ? 

As stated in another chapter, a committee of Massachusetts ladies, 
after visiting the public schools of their State a short time ago, made 
a report, declaring " that teachers almost universally complain of the 
prevalence of lying, stealing, profanity, and impurity among their 
scholars." Now, if this statement is true, and if Mr. Lawson's 
philosophy is sound, what a splendid place a Massachusetts public 
school must be in which to strengthen and give, as it were, the fin- 
ishing touch to the pious education of a virtuous youth. If Mr. 
Lawson's doctrine — which, after all, is simply the doctrine whereon 
rests the present anti-parental public-school system — is to be the set- 
tled doctrine on educational questions in this country, what becomes of 
the liberty of conscience ? If the public and not the parental judg- 
ment and conscience must determine as to the fitness of the school 
for each individual child, suppose that the people of some religious 
denomination should one of these days obtain a predominating 
influence in elections, and should, in obedience to the public con- 
science, force the teaching of their religion upon all children, in' 
utter disregard of the dictates of the parental conscience of thou- 
sands of unbelievers in the popular religion ; would anybody deny 
that this would be a violation of the principle of religious liberty? 
And yet is it any more a violation of religious liberty to force a 
child to study the doctrines and principles of a religion, against 
which the consciences of its parents protest, than to force that same 
child into associations with immoral teachers and vile companions 
which these same parents conscientiously believe will be a thousand 



98 " Poison Drops''' in the Federal Senate. 

times more injurious to the child than the most objectionable re- 
ligious teachings? In this connection there is one thought that 
sometimes fills us with amazement with reference to the action of 
a vast number of people of all creeds, and it is this : While they 
are particularly, and we ma}' say properly, careful to guard against 
the teaching of any religion in the public schools which may tend 
to estrange their children from their own, there is, as a rule, com- 
paratively little heed -paid by any class of religionists to the vicious, 
degrading, and criminal principles and practices of either teachers 
or school companions, by means of which millions of those children 
not only lose all faith in the creeds of their parents, but learn to 
despise the very name of religion, and finally leave school both 
confirmed atheists and hardened criminals. Our readers will 
understand that this remark is not made in any sectarian sense, for 
we believe in our heart that it applies with nearly equal force to 
Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. 

Judging from their actions and their non-actions, it would really 
seem that there is a vast number of professing religionists, clergymen 
as well as laymen, who think it matters but very little if children do 
go to hell, provided they get there by some other road than by the 
way of a wrong religion. For our own part we do sincerely believe 
that our ungodly and anti-parental public-school education is doing 
far more to-day to people the devil's dominions than all the false 
religions in the world. 

THE ACTION OF THE PRESIDENT AND SENATE WITH REFERENCE TO THE 
WRITER'S APPOINTMENT AND CONFIRMATION. 

The bitter and uni'elenting war so recently waged against the 
writer's appointment and confirmation as U. S. Assistant Attor- 
ney-General because of his views on the educational question is 
well known to the public, and the utter failure of that bigoted 
and fanatical war to accomplish its purpose is equally well known. 
The Senatorial discussions touching the immediate subject of his 
confirmation having been conducted in secret session, the writer 
has, of course, no means of knowing, except from generally-ac- 
cepted report, what was said or done either by his friends in 
order to secure his confirmation or by his opponents in order to 
prevent it. It is generally understood, however, that the matter 
was twice referred to the Judiciary Committee and twice reported 
upon adversely by a strictly partisan vote. It was also generally 
understood and never— to the writer's knowledge— denied that, after 
the refutation of the anonymous slander quoted by Mr. Senator In- 



A Vital Question for Ptiblic- School Teachers. 99 

galls during the debate on the "Blair" bill, the only objection 
openly urged against him was because of his views on the school 
question, as set forth in his little pamphlet, "Drops from the 
Poison Fountain." 

It was in view of this objection that — as stated in our introduc- 
tory remarks — we sent a copy of said pamphlet to every member 
of the Senate, accompanied by a request in each case that if the 
Senator to whom it was addressed could find anything therein 
tending to prove the author's unfitness for the office he held he 
might be notified of the fact. No such notification was ever re- 
ceived, and the fact that his confirmation followed soon after the 
distribution of said pamphlets, while it does not prove that a ma- 
jority of the Senators or any of them endorse the writer's views 
on the school question, it does prove that a majority of the mem- 
bers of that august body, including a number of broad-minded 
Republicans, could find nothing in said views to warrant them in 
ostracizing from official position the man who proclaimed them. 
And this of itself can only be regarded as a most magnificent 
triumph of intelligence over ignorance ; of truth over falsehood ; 
-and of true liberality over bigotry, fanaticism, and proscription. 
With these barriers broken down, if the principles we proclaim 
-are just and right they are sure to prevail. But if they are wrong 
we do not desire their success. 



CHAPTER XV. 



A VITAL QUESTION FOR PUBLIC-SCHOOL TEACHERS. 

In a work entitled the "Daily Public School," published by 
Lippincott in 1866, at pages 77-78 we find it stated that " the 
most frequent failures noticed in the reports are in matters 
of discipline or government. And this is perhaps the most 
difficult of all others to remedy." 

The author then goes on to attribute this failure of discipline in 
the public schools to a want of capacity in the public-school teach- 
ers to govern pupils. 

We have no doubt but that in many cases there is amongst our 
public-school teachers a lack of governing capacity. But we main- 
tain that, as a general rule, the want of discipline amongst our com- 
mon-school pupils arises chiefly from causes inherent in the very sys- 



ioo '•''Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

tem under which they are being educated. These causes consist 
chiefly in a lack of legitimate authority, and are of such a nature 
that the very best of teachers are powerless to remove or control 
them. 

We maintain the principle laid down by Bluckstone, and recog- 
nized by all moral and religious writers, as well as every lawyer 
worthy of the name, that all authority is from God, and that to 
fathers and mothers has He entrusted so much authority as is neces- 
sary for the government of their own children. 

The Divine command, which says " Honor thy father and mother, ,r 
was engraved upon the heart of every child of Adam long before it 
was either written upon tables of stone or thundered from the heights 
of Sinai. The law requiring children to obey their own parents need 
•■>ot to be learned, for it is innate in their very natures. It is born 
#ith them ; it is a part of themselves, and instinctively becomes 
their rule of conduct before their young minds are capable of even 
the simplest process of reasoning. Just as the young lamb naturally 
hearkens to the voice of its own mother, while heedless of the babel- 
like bleatings of a thousand other ewes of the same flock, so does the 
young babe — unless deterred by the folly or wickedness of those who 
called it into being — instinctively recognize and obey the parental 
command, despite the jarring and discordant notes of ten thousand 
protesting tongues. 

The God of nature has so wisely and so beneficently connected 
the path of parental duty on the one side with the path of filial 
obedience on the other that it is next to impossible for fathers and 
mothers to faithfully pursue the former without leading their chil- 
dren into the latter. 

Until taught suspicion by repeated contact with a selfish, deceit- 
ful, and treacherous world, children are by nature of a trustful, con- 
fiding disposition, and, as a rule, parents have only to prove them- 
selves worthy of the confidence of their little ones in order to insure 
that confidence. 

The child's earliest impressions are the deepest, the strongest, 
and the most enduring ; and these impressions are, as a rule, de- 
rived from its own father and mother. 

By the merciful dispensations of Divine Providence the new-born 
babe, in the very dawn of its infant consciousness, finds itself sweetly 
reposing in the arms and nestling in the bosom of a loving mother, 
or gleefully dangling upon the knee of a doting father. Out of its 
mother's breast it draws the very sustenance of life, whilst from her 
ever-watchful eye beams the first genial sunlight of human sympathy 



A Vital Question for Public-School Teachers. ior 

and affection capable of warming into life and activity the love germs 
which Divinity has planted in its pure and innocent heart. And who 
-does not know that love constitutes the great motive power of obe • 
dience? Did not He, who is the very source and fountain of truth, 
say " If you love me you will keep my commandments ?" And what 
is easier or sweeter or more gratifying to human nature than the do- 
ing of that which most pleases the one who is the most beloved ? 
And who on earth has more numerous or stronger claims upon the 
love of a child than its own father and mother, provided they dis- 
charge the duties of father and mother ? 

In view of these and kindred considerations, it becomes obvious 
that, as a rule, nobody in the wide world stands in so favorable a 
position to command the obedience of a child as do its own parents, 
because nobody else is in a position to establish so perfect a title to 
the love and gratitude of the child ; nor has anybody else the same 
natural right to be honored and obeyed by a child, in all things law- 
ful, as have its own father and mother. 

Therefore, the school teacher who expects a willing and cheerful 
obedience at the hands of a pupil should come invested with an 
authority which belongs alone to the father and mother of such pupil, 
and with which they alone have the power to clothe him. Such is 
the authority which parents confer upon the teachers of private 
schools whom they select for the extremely delicate and important 
duty of educating and training their children. 

But such is not the authority which the teacher of a public school 
wields over his pupils. 

On the contrary, as the law provides and as the courts have re- 
peatedly decided, 1 the teacher derives his authority over his pupils 
not from their respective parents but from the political State. It is 
by and under the State's authority that rules are made both for 
teachers and pupils ; it is by and under State authority, and in de- 
fiance alike of teachers, parents, and pupils, that particular books 
are used and others proscribed ; and it is in obedience to State au- 
thority, and not of their own free-will and choice, that parents are 
compelled to send their children to these schools under pain of 
-absolutely forfeiting all money paid by them for public-school pur- 
poses, besides hazarding numberless prosecutions and fines for a 
failure to send them. 8 

Therefore, when the pupil of a common school is commanded by 

1 See California State Superintendent's Biennial Keport for 1864^'65, and judicial decision there 
cited. 

2 See itatute passed by the California Legislature March 28, 1874, (quoted ante.) 



102 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

his teacher to be punctual in his attendance, to read a particular 
book, to devote himself to a particular study, to refrain from this or 
that forbidden practice, he does not and cannot regard such command 
as bearing the seal of parental authority. On the contrary, he feel& 
and knows in his heart of hearts — however imperfectly he may be 
able to express that knowledge — that such command comes from the 
political State, the usurper of the parental prerogative, the violator 
of parental right, and the destroyer of parental authority. 

He feels and knows that his own father, however intelligent, hon- 
orable, and upright he may be, has had no more voice in determining 
who should be his teacher, what classes he should attend, what 
books he should use, or what rules he should obey, than had the 
meanest and most besotted drunkard, ruffian, and rake that ever 
polluted the precincts of a tippling-shop with his vile presence. 

If, then, it is true that love is the great incentive to obedience, 
what sort of motive shall we bring to bear upon the minds and 
hearts of the pupils of our anti-parental common schools in order 
to incite them to obey their rules and observe their discipline ? 

Amid the repeated clashings and conflicts between home thought, 
home instruction, and home discipline on one side, and common- 
school thought, common-school instruction, and common-school 
discipline on the other, such as the pupils of our common schools 
are necessarily doomed either to witness or to encounter in one 
shape or another, it must soon become apparent to the intellect of 
the dullest of these pupils that his teachers, however intelligent, 
learned, and virtuous they may be, are not at liberty to follow either 
the dictates of their own judgments and consciences, or to respect 
the wishes of its parents, either in prescribing the particular books 
it shall study, the companions with whom it shall associate, the rules 
it shall obey, or the punishment it shall undergo as the penalty of 
its disobedience. 

The child soon learns the lesson taught by Mr. John Swett in his 
Biennial Report as California State Superintendent of Public In- 
struction in 1864, namely : That 

" The vulgar impressio?i that parents have a legal right to 
dictate to teachers is entirely erroneous." That 

" There is no privity of contract between the parents of pupils 
to be sent to school and the school-master. That the latter is em- 
ployed and paid by the town* and to them only is he responsible 
on his contract." That 

" The only persons ivho have a legal right to give orders to the 
teacher are his employers, namely, the committee in some States 
and in others the directors or trustees." And that 



A Vital Question for Public- School Teachers. 103 

li 7f his conduct is approved of by his employers, the parents 
have no remedy against him or the7n." 

Excellent teachers of common schools often complain that their 
pupils disregard their commands, and that when punished for so 
doing their parents get angry and use harsh and insulting language 
towards them. 

To the common-school teacher who does not stop to trace effects 
back to their legitimate causes, it of course looks very um-easonable 
that parents should get angry and become abusive and insulting to 
them because of their having inflicted merited punishment upon 
their children. But a moment's reflection will show that the anger 
of such parents is not after all so unreasonable as might at first 
blush appear. 

Before any one can be properly entitled to punish another two 
things are essentially necessary, namely : 

First, the punishment should be just ; and, 

Secondly, it should come from one having authority to adminis- 
ter it. 

It is a well-settled principle of law that the killing of the very 
worst murderer in the world by one not properly authorized to in- 
flict the death penalty, even after such criminal has been tried, con- 
victed, and sentenced to death, would itself be murder. Not, 
indeed, because the murderer did not deserve killing, but because 
his slayer had no authority to kill him. 

But it is as natural with an individual as it is with a Government 
to resent any unauthorized invasion by another of his personal ju- 
risdiction and authority. Even the owner of a dumb brute dislikes 
to have it punished by another without his individual consent. 
Hence, he who kicks his neighbor's dog, without asking that neigh- 
bor's permission, need not be surprised if he receive another kick 
in return, although the dog may have richly deserved the punish- 
ment. 

Is it, then, surprising if parents revolt at the idea of having their 
little children, their own flesh and blood and bone, beat and bruised 
and mangled, not by their authority, but by the authority of the 
town? 

Even well-merited chastisement, when inflicted on a child, cannot 
have its proper effect unless the child is made to realize the fact that 
he who authorized such punishment did so in obedience to the dic- 
tates of a loving heart. 

But where is there a child that God has blessed with an affection- 
ate father and mother that is so stupid as not to know that for it 



to 4 



Dro-ps " in the Federal Senate. 



the most loving heart on earth is the parental heart ? Yet, whenever 
the common-school teacher either spares the rod or lays on the lash, 
he does so, as we have seen, not by parental authority, but in obedi- 
ence to the requirements and at the dictation of the " town." 

Here, then, is the first great and insurmountable obstacle which 
even the very best teachers necessarily encounter in their efforts to 
enforce discipline in a common school, namely, the wrong source 
whence they derive their jurisdiction and authority over their pupils. 

And it is easy to see that this difficulty can never be remedied 
under the present system ; because the system itself is at war with 
the unchanging and unchangeable laws of nature and nature's God, 
commanding children to love, honor, and obey their fathers and 
mothers, but not commanding them to obey those who wrongfully 
usurp their fathers' and mothers' places. 

Another and kindred difficulty which bars the way to discipline, 
and defies the best intended efforts to maintain order in the common 
schools — even by the best of teachers — arises in part from a want of 
that degree of freedom and independence which would allow the 
teacher to hearken to the dictates of his own judgment. On every 
side the principals and teachers of the common schools find them- 
selves crippled, haltered, and hampered in a thousand ways. They 
are hampered by statutory school laws ; hampered by State boards 
of education ; hampered by county boards and by city boards ; ham- 
pered by superintendents ; hampered by the ceaseless criticisms, 
fault-findings, and backbitings of jealous rivals, who have either 
been superseded by them in their positions as teachers, or by whom 
they are themselves in danger of being superseded ; and hampered 
by the ceaseless dread of offending in the person of some influential 
ward politician, or some purse-proud upstart parent who demands 
special privileges for his precious scion. 

In the first place, as just stated, the teacher is hampered by the 
statutory school laws in a manner to defy discipline. 

For example : We all know how fatal to the discipline of a 
school is the perpetual presence of even a few rude, unruly boys. 
And yet the law leaves the teachers and even the principals of pub- 
lic schools utterly helpless so far as any power of their own is con- 
cerned to rid their schools of the vilest young imps that ever 
breathed. 

For instance, we have a statute giving to school directors or trus- 
tees the sole power to exclude "filthy or vicious children from 
school." 

Under the operation of this statute, no difference how unruly, dis- 



A Vital Question for Public-School Teachers. ioc; 

obedient, or vile a pupil may be, nor how destructive to the discipline 
of the school his pernicious example may prove, still it depends upon 
the trustees, and upon them alone, to either rid the school of his 
presence or not at their option. 

As a fair illustration of the disciplinary workings of this machine 
system of common schools, we shall here repeat an anecdote related 
by the inimitable Gail Hamilton, at page 109 of her spicy little book 
entitled 

" OUR COMMON-SCHOOL SYSTEM." 

" Not long ago," says the authoress, " a boy of the third class, in 
a school thoroughly furnished with all the officers required by our 
efficient system, was eating candy in school, and was directed by his 
teacher to throw it into the waste-basket. He complied at once, re- 
marking, as he passed her, that she was ' a d — d fool,' in tones loud 
enough to be heard throughout the room. The teacher sent him 
home, and appealed to the superintendent of schools, who replied 
that ' had she suspended the boy he could do something, but now 
did not like to interfere, and would rather the committee should set- 
tle it.' The committee were consulted, the boy remaining in the 
school the while, and the committee held up the discipline of the 
school and the beauties of the 'system' by the startling assurance 
to the boy that for the next offence, of whatever nature, he was to be 
' sent to me !' " 

Now, it can require but very little calm reflection to convince even 
the dullest intellect how utterly impossible it would be for the best 
teacher in America to maintain the discipline of his or her school 
under circumstances like these. 

By thus impliedly excusing the boy for calling his teacher a fool, 
this committee virtually joined in reiterating the odious and insult- 
ing epithet, and thereby licensed every other pupil in the school to 
manifest their regard for her and her authority in a similar manner. 

If it be said that this was only an isolated case, we reply that, 
while this particular case may be an isolated one, the spirit of in- 
subordination to which it owes its origin is not by any means an 
isolated or an exceptional one, as the above quotation from " The 
Daily Common School" clearly indicates, and as the daily expe- 
rience of our public-school teachers throughout the country abun- 
dantly attests. 

The reasons why teachers cannot, as a rule, rely upon school 
trustees to actively and cordially second their efforts to maintain 
the discipline of their schools have already been dwelt upon ; but 
a few more words in this connection on that subject may not be out 
of place. 



106 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

As already intimated, it very often happens that school trustees 
do not have, and are not required or expected by those to whom they 
are chiefly indebted for their positions to have, any special fitness for 
their offices aside from an unswerving fidelity to their friends, 
coupled with the necessary capacity to render themselves serviceable 
to those who have served them. Let us take, then, for example the 
case of the boy spoken of by Gail Hamilton, who had called his 
lady teacher a fool. The boy's conduct is reported to the superin- 
tendent, whose duty it is supposed to be to protect the teacher against 
insult and to maintain the discipline of the school. But it so hap- 
pens that this boy's father is an influential ward politician. He 
belongs to the same political party as the superintendent. He did 
as much as any other man, if not more, to secure his nomination for, 
and his election to, the office he now holds. For him to counsel the 
boy's expulsion from school or the infliction on him of any other pun- 
ishment at all commensurate with his offence might so incense his 
father as to convert him from a warm and most valuable friend into 
a bitter and dangerous foe. "And," says the superintendent, 
" another election is near at hand, when I shall greatly need not only 
my friend's vote, but the votes of his numerous friends, first to carry 
the primai-ies and secure my renomination, and next to aid me at the 
polls on the day of election. The teacher is only a woman anyhow. 
She has no vote, and very few, if any, friends whose votes she can 
influence." Therefore he shirks a responsibility 1 which the duties 
of his office seemed to impose upon him, and throws it upon the 
shoulders of the school committee. 

But when the school committee was appealed to we do not find 
that the matter was bettered in the least. And if the whole truth 
were known, it is not at all unlikely that they too had certain per- 
sonal or political axes of their own to grind, and were also looking 
to the father of the offending boy for help. 

But whatever may have been the particular motive of the school 
officials, the fact remains all the same that the teacher whom they had 
charged with the duty of maintaining the discipline of the school — just 
like thousands of other teachers similarly situated — found herself with- 
out the necessary authority , and utterly powerless to perform that duty. 
Not only that ; she was compelled, in humiliation and shame, to 
pocket a most outrageous insult at the hands of an inferior, perpe- 
trated in the presence of her whole school, and then had, moreover, 
to submit to be publicly snubbed by those whom the law had placed 

1 In the State referred to by Gail Hamilton the law slightiy varies from that of California in Its 
details but not in its principles. 






A Vital Question for Public-School Teachers. 107 

above her, because she had dared to seek for relief in the only quar- 
ter where the law allowed her to seek it. 

In order to realize how truly dependent, how pitiably humiliating 
is the position in which our boasted "system" places the teachers 
of its schools, it is only necessary to consider how perilous to their 
positions it would often prove for thsm to even attempt the enforce- 
ment of discipline amongst their pupils. 

Open, as our common schools are, to all kinds of children, and 
the children of all kinds of parents, how rarely can it be truthfully 
said of one of these schools that there is not amongst its pupils even 
one who, if angered by its teacher, could, through its parents, 
exert sufficient influence over some one or more members of the 
school board to effect the teacher's removal ? 

And if even one such pupil be found in school, then will the teacher 
feel himself completely at its mercy. 

But to be at the mercy of any one pupil in school is virtually to be 
at the mercy of all. For whenever it becomes known to the whole 
school that there is one of their number who can with impunity defy 
the teacher's authority, it will no longer be possible to find even so 
many as one who, in the light of such knowledge, will respect that 
authority. 

We are fully aware that there are in our common schools many in- 
competent teachers, but we think we have now pretty clearly shown 
that the very best of teachers can not, as a rule, maintain discipline in 
these schools, and that for the double reason that the teacher has too 
little authority, and that this little comes from the wrong source, 
namely, from the public instead of the fiare7it. 

The failure of the pupil to make progress in his studies is almost 
sure to be attributed to the teacher's lack of ability to teach, whereas 
this failure not unfrequently results from the want of discipline. 

It should be borne in mind that in a school where there is little or 
no discipline there can be little or no progress. It requires no ar- 
gument to prove that even one unruly child, whom the teacher can 
neither govern nor expel, can so bedevil an entire school as to make 
study impossible. And without an application to study there can 
be no improvement. 

The teacher, too, is generally made the scape-goat to bear the 
blame for all the demoralization and corruption of the school ; 
whereas if St. Peter himself were the principal of one of these 
schools, with all the other apostles as assistant teachers ; if he were 
compelled to receive into his school children of all kinds, classes, 
and characters, and of all degrees of moral depravity ; if his au- 



10S " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

thority over these children were not derived from their parents, but 
was only such as came from the political State ; if he had not the 
privilege of making and enforcing rules for the government of his 
school, but were compelled to accept whatever rules and regulations 
such a board of politicians as the trickeries, the frauds, the briberies, 
and the accidents of an election might chance to place in power ; 
and if, besides being denied the authority to either punish or expel, 
according to the dictates of his own judgment, refractory or corrupt 
and vicious pupils, he was furthermore forbidden to inculcate any 
principle of morality having for its object a higher aim than the 
gratification of man's animal appetites and earthly desires, we do 
not hesitate to declare it as our firm conviction, based on the fore- 
going reasons, that, as a rule, under such a system and subject to such 
degrading and humiliating conditions, not even St. Peter, with all 
the other apostles to help him, would find it possible, in the natural 
order of things, to check the swelling tide of common school im- 
morality and crime. Except by rare chance, he could neither 
reform the least vicious nor shield from utter ruin the most virtuous 
children in his school. 

If we are at fault in this conclusion, we are open to conviction, 
and shall take it as a favor if somebody will point out the fallacy of 
our reasoning. But if we are correct, then we ask, in all sincerity, 
if it is just and right to throw upon the teachers of our public 
schools all the blame for the lying and lechery, the dishonesty, im- 
piety, and every other kind and degree of hopeless depravity which 
are to-day blasting and corrupting so many millions of our American 
common-school children? Every honest, intelligent, and capable 
common-school teacher sees, feels, and laments the evils of which 
we speak. It was a knowledge of these evils and of their parent 
causes which drew from the able and distinguished Dr. Joseph 
LeConte, a leading professor of our California State University, in 
the course of a letter to the writer of this article, the remark else- 
where quoted — 

" That any education which weakens the family tie strikes at the 
very foundation of society, and no amount of good in other directions 
can atone for this greatest of evils." 

It was this same knowledge which prompted the Hon. Ezra S. 
Carr, former State Superintendent of Public Instruction, in his offi- 
cial report for 1878-79, page 39, when speaking of the workings of 
our common school system, to declare that — 

" Dependence on one side and patronage on the other destroy the 



A Vital Question for Public-School Teachers. 109 

free and harmonious play of benefits between the home and the 
school ;" and that 

" Private instittitions, colleges, and seminaries draw away our 
best teachers, who thus avoid what is, to a sensitive and high- 
minded teacher, an intolerable burden." 

Similar to these also are the views of Gail Hamilton, a writer 
already quoted, who, at page 203 of her book, says : 

" The tendency of our 'system' is to degrade the teachers more 
and more by the, perhaps, unconscious subjection of the teacher's 
duties to the machinery." 

On page 306 she adds : 

" The ' system' is constantly degrading teachers into menials, and 
concentrating authority in the hands of outside men who have noth- 
ing whatever to do with the actual teaching, and have the slightest 
possible contact with the children." 

Now, we ask in all candor, if it is possible to degrade the teacher 
without degrading the pupil also? Can you degrade the master 
without degrading the disciple ? 

There is, there can be, no higher or more honorable occupation 
on this earth than that of a teacher who understands his calling 
and faithfully discharges its duties. Amongst all the poets, orators, 
sages, statesmen, and heroes of ancient Greece, where is there one 
whose illustrious name shines to-day with so bright and unfading 
a lustre as that "of Socrates, the teacher of Athenian youth? And 
were we to blot out from the history of China the name and the 
teachings, and the fruits of the teachings, of Confucius, it would, so 
far as that country is concerned, be like blotting the sun from the 
heavens. The great mission of the Messiah Himself, on earth, was 
that of teacher. 

Whatever country can boast of its great statesmen, great orators, 
great warriors, great jurists, great scientists, or of the great intelli- 
gence, morality, and virtue of its people, must acknowledge that, 
next to God, it is to its teachers it owes its highest debt of gratitude 
for so inestimable a boon. 

But how is it possible for a teacher, though never so well qual- 
ified for his position, to earn this gratitude, who is not allowed to 
exercise his teaching qualifications ? 

Brought, as he is, in direct contact with, and required to govern, 
to teach, and to develop in due proportions all the faculties of a 
multitude of children, widely differing in mental powers, in moral 
training, in natural dispositions, in tastes, in physical constitutions, 



! 



tio " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

and in their modes of daily home life, there is probably no other 
calling which requires the exercise of more unrestrained freedom 
of action than does the calling of a principal or teacher of a school. 
And yet there is no other calling in which so little freedom is allowed 
in the performance of its duties. 

Thus, for example, the physician who undertakes to doctor a 
patient reserves the liberty to prescribe both the kind and quantity 
of the medicines to be used, and the intervals at which they are to 
be taken, as well as the right to change his treatment whenever in 
his judgment such change is desirable. So, also, the mechanic who 
undertakes the job of building a good house always reserves the 
right both to choose his tools and to reject rotten or defective mate- 
rials. But the common-school teacher can neither reject intractable 
nor rotten timber nor select the tools (the books) with which he is 
to do his work. 

Not even the calling of a kitchen servant is near so dependent 
and servile as that of a common-school teacher under our present 
system, because even the kitchen servant has but one mistress to 
please in order to retain her place and earn her bread ; whereas 
the common-school teacher, as we have seen, imperils his position 
every time he angers a child and incurs the displeasure of a parent 
who has influence with the school trustees. 

Perhaps we may be asked, wherein consists the difference between 
the freedom or independence belonging to a private-school teacher 
and that which is enjoyed by the teacher of a public school ? 

We think that enough has already been said to render such 
difference quite apparent ; but inasmuch as this is a very important 
branch of our subject, a few words more on that point may not be 
amiss. 

In the first place, the man who proposes to establish a private 
school, just like a lawyer, a doctor, a merchant, a banker, or a 
mechanic, when seeking to build up a business, will rely chiefly 
upon his individual capacity and merit in order to secure employ- 
ment. If he intends to make teaching his permanent business — 
and if not he had better go at something else — he will either buy, 
build, or rent his own school-house and premises, and procure his 
own school furniture. He will then establish his own rules and 
regulations, as well for the admission and expulsion of pupils as 
for their government and discipline while under his charge. These 
rules and regulations he will make known to those whose patronage 
he desires to secure, so that every parent or guardian who sends his 
children to such school will understand, at least in general terms, 



A Vital Question for Public- School Teachers. in 

not only the rules by which they are to be governed, but also the 
character of the pupils with whom they are to associate. The 
teacher will also select for the use of his school the particular books 
by the use of which he believes himself capable of accomplishing 
the best results. 

When parents send their children to such a school, it is because 
they agree with the teacher as to what sort of school is best for 
their children. In such a school there is no conflict or clashing 
between the jurisdiction of the parent and that of the teacher ; 
because it is from the parents of each pupil, and only from its 
parents, that the teacher derives his authority to direct it, to teach 
it, to admonish it, to command it, and to enforce its obedience ; 
and it is to the parents, and only to the parents of each, that he 
stands amenable for the manner in which he uses or abuses his 
powers. In such a school, so long as the teacher keeps within the 
scope of his authority, his counsels, his commands, and his chas- 
tisements become the counsels, the commands, and the chastise- 
ments of the child's own parents, because they come backed by pa- 
rental authority and bearing the seal of the parental sanction. 
Should the pupil of a private school demand of his teacher by 
what authority he requires him to study this or that book, to refrain 
from this or that forbidden practice, to be present at a given hour, or 
to retire at the tap of a particular bell, the teacher need only reply — 

" It is by the authority of your father, who loves you as he loves 
his own life. It was he, of his own free-will and choice — without 
reference to what others might think, say, or do — who placed you 
here. He selected this school because he himself had confidence in 
its teachers, approved of its rules, its discipline, and its course of 
study. Therefore you cannot violate the rules of the school, nor 
refuse obedience to its teachers, without disobeying your own father 
and mother, disobeying God, and proving yourself an unnatural, 
undutiful, and ungrateful child." 

And what stronger motives — to discipline and study — than these 
could possibly be placed before the mind of an intelligent and well- 
bred youth? 

But suppose that the private teacher, after having exhausted his 
authority in the way of counsel and correction, should still find his 
pupil refractory. What then? Why, he would dismiss or expel 
him of course. And if the father of the dismissed pupil should 
even have the wealth of the Vanderbilts, the Goulds, the Stanfords, 
and the Crockers combined, still he would not be able, even if so 



H2 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

disposed, either to damage the school or to frighten the teacher out 
of one moment's peace of mind. 

The noble independence of such a proceeding could but result in 
improving the discipline, strengthening the popularity, and swelling 
the ranks of the school. The expulsion of such a pupil could no 
more destroy the teacher's patronage than one of the Egyptian pyr- 
amids could be destroyed or overturned by plucking a single rotten 
pebble from its base and replacing it with a solid stone. 

In cases of punishments not amounting to dismissal or expulsion, 
the most that any dissatisfied patron could do would be to withdraw 
his own children from school. But in all such cases let the teacher 
be sure to have right on his side, and for every pupil thus with- 
drawn he will gain two in its place. When a teacher has once suc- 
ceeded in thus establish mg a school of his own, resting on no other 
foundation than its meiits, he is no more afraid of being turned out 
of his employment and left without the means of a support, because 
of having incurred the displeasure of one or a dozen discontented 
patrons of his school, than a lawyer, a doctor, or a merchant, when 
backed by the unbounded confidence of nearly an entire community, 
would be afraid of having his business ruined, and himself reduced 
to beggary, because of having incurred the enmity of a few unrea- 
soning fault-finders. 

Where, then, we would ask, is there a teacher to be found who 
would not to-day infinitely prefer the princely independence of 
teaching and managing a school under parental auspices, relying 
for patronage solely on his or her own merits — provided, of course, 
there are any merits to rely upon — rather than be compelled, as mul- 
titudes now are compelled, to beg, entreat, flatter, and fawn at the 
feet of pot-house politicians and public-school boards for the poor 
and pitiful privilege of playing the menial to their inferiors as the 
price of bread ? 

But here the inquiry presents itself: How would it be possible 
for all our public-school teachers, even if all were fully capable of 
teaching, to find a living patronage for schools under " parental au- 
spices," so long as multitudes of parents would be unable to pay 
anything for their children's education, while other multitudes 
would be unwilling, after paying their school taxes into the public 
treasury, to pay, virtually, a second time for their children's educa- 
tion. 

This, we confess, is, to a large extent, an insurmountable difficulty, 
so long as the present anti-parental and teacher-enslaving system 
remains intact. Although so odious is this system becoming in the eyes 



A Vital Question for Public- School Teachers. 113 

of thinking parents, as well as of intelligent teachers, that educational 
institutions established and run under private auspices are every 
day growing more and more into public favor. But for this fact, 
ex-Superintendent Carr would not have been able truthfully to de- 
clare, in the language already quoted, that — 

" Private institutions, colleges, and seminaries draw away 
our best teachers, who thus avoid what is to a sensitive and 
high-minded teacher an intolerable burden." 

Yet it is only a comparatively limited number of parents who feel 
able to protect their children from the demoi-alizing and blighting 
effects of a State-school training, at so heavy a cost as the paying 
a second time for their education. 

But, if it is true, as asserted by Prof. Joseph LeConte in his 
letter already quoted — 

That "private schools, each parent choosing his own, furnish a 
better education, all things considered, that any public-school 
system ; " and if it is also true, as maintained by ex-Superintendent 
Carr, that the public-school atmosphere is so much more uncon- 
genial and unwholesome for "high-minded teachers " than is to be 
found in '•'•private institutions ;" in other words, if private institu- 
tions are so much better than the public ones, both for teachers 
and pupils, then we are confronted with this important question, 
namely : 

Does not common sense suggest, and do not the true interests 
both of teachers and pupils demand, that the aforesaid schools of the 
better kind be multiplied, and those of the inferior kind diminished 
in numbers, in patronage, and in influence? And ought not this to 
be done as quickly and as rapidly as possible, until not a teacher 
in America, who is unwilling to be a slave for the pitiful considera- 
tion of a most precarious salary, and not a child, whose parents 
have so much as the least appreciation of the dignity or the respon- 
sibility of the parental office, shall any longer be victimized upon 
the altar of our false, servile, and ruinous system of education? 

It seems clear to our mind that this question can only be answered 
in the affirmative, and that, therefore, the only remaining inquiry 
is, as to how so desirable a result can be accomplished. 

As for ourselves we shall be satisfied with any just and practicable 
mode of accomplishing the end proposed. But until some other 
and better plan be suggested we shall still insist upon that which is 
outlined in the seventh proposition of our platform of principles. 
(See ante Chap. XIV.) 



114 ''''Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

We ai*e convinced that this, or some similar plan, by throwing 
open the whole business of teaching school to private enterprise 
and free competition, leaving every parent and guardian to select a 
school to suit himself, and requiring the State to pay for a good 
common secular education according to results in all cases where 
parents are unable to pay, would call to the front the very best and 
ablest teachers that the country affords. The adoption of such a 
plan would shatter the fetters that hold in bondage thousands of 
really good and competent teachers in our common schools, whose 
usefulness is now being destroyed, and the light of whose genius is 
being smothered beneath the accumulated rubbish of senseless rules 
and meaningless formalities. 

Undoubtedly many of these teachers are capable of taking their 
places in the very front ranks of the world's greatest educational 
benefactors. And yet, after long years of labor, vexation, and dis- 
appointment, they find themselves neither understood nor appre- 
ciated, either in the public-school department or out of it. And 
the reason is that they are so circumscribed and hampered in their 
work that they have no more chance of displaying their real 
powers than an eagle would have to prove its ability to fly while 
kept in a cage with a baboon for a keeper. 

There is, however, another class of public-school teachers who, 
like counterfeit coin, often pass for much more than their value. 
In fact, owing to a certain false and brassy glitter which they put 
on, they frequently outshine the pure gold of genuine worth. 

But it is to the former class of public-school teachers that we now 
appeal for their countenance and support in aid of educational 
reform upon the plan just indicated. 

Inasmuch as the establishment of this plan will result in forc- 
ing every teacher to rise or fall, to sink or swim, to survive or per- 
ish, according to his own individual merits or demerits, we know 
it would be vain for us to expect either aid, sympathy, or counte- 
nance from that other class of teachers who, being conscious of 
their own unfitness to teach a school, know full well that under 
the plan we propose their teaching career would be at an end. 

To illustrate : Let us suppose that by the same cord we were to 
bind an eagle and a monkey to an inflated balloon ; both would as- 
cend with equal velocity, and both would rise equally high ; but 
this would be a very poor test of their comparative powers of 
flight. 

If, however, when in mid-air, it were proposed, in language in- 
telligible to them both, to cut the cord which held them to the 



A Vital Question for Public- School Teachers. 115 

balloon, we think it would not be hard to tell, from the joyous 
and triumphant screams of the eagle compared with the pitiful 
shrieks and squalls of the monkey, which of the two could fly and 
which must fall. 

Like unto this inflated balloon is our common -school system. 
Like unto an eagle tied to this balloon is many an able and highly- 
accomplished teacher, who could soar far higher without the system 
than with it ; and like unto this monkey is many a worthless fraud, 
who rises and soars with the system, but who could neither rise nor 
soar without it. 

Naturally enough, these are the implacable foes of the reform for 
-which we plead. The others are at heart its friends. 

The time has now arrived when it behooves these friends- of gen- 
uine educational reform who hold positions in the public-school de- 
partment to be up and doing. They have the power, if they will 
but use it, to do more for the advancement of this great cause than 
any other class of citizens, and in proportion to their power will be 
their responsibility. Their reputation, too, more than that of any 
other class, is involved in the issues here at stake. 

It is every day becoming more and more apparent, from the in- 
spection of statistics, that all over the country the growth of crime 
is commensurate with the spread, growth, and development of our 
common-school system. 

To show that this growth of crime is going on within the temples 
of learning, and under the very eyes of our public -school teachers, 
we need only remind our readers of the statements repeatedly quoted 
by us, not only of leading public-school teachers of California, but 
also of Massachusetts, the boasted mother of the system. 

For example : In the month of December, 1881, a California State 
Teachers' Institute was held in the city of San Francisco, and in the 
progress of its proceedings several of the leading teachers of our 
State schools made speeches, in the course of which, with scarcely 
a dissenting voice, it was declared that the children of our public 
schools were addicted to " lying and dishonesty." (See reports of 
these speeches in the daily Chronicle, Call, and Examiner of De- 
cember 28, 29, 1881 ; also see Defender of March, 18S2.) 

And we have on several occasions quoted the report, made by a 
committee of ladies, touching the result of their visits to the public 
schools of Massachusetts, for the purpose of ascertaining their moral 
condition, wherein they declared that — 

" The teachers almost universally complain of the prevalence of 
lying, stealing, profanity, and impurity among their scholars" 
(See S. F. Chronicle, October 3, 1880.) 






1 1 6 " Poison Drops " in the Federal Senate. 

Then, again, we have the statement, more general in its nature, 
quoted, as above, from the " Daily Public School," declaring thr 
" The most frequent failures noticed in the reports are in the mat 
ter of discipline or government." 

And, of coui-se, where there is "no discipline" or "govern- 
ment " there is no progress in knowledge, and no check upon 
vicious children or the growth of vice. 

Now, the great and overshadowing question to which we desire 

to call the attention of the public-school teachers of America is this : 

Where lies the chief blame for this wa?tt of discipline, and 

this consequent growth of demoralization and crime, in the 

public schools? 

Is it true, as claimed by the author of the "Daily Public School," 
that the fault is in the teachers ? Or is it true, as claimed by us, 
that the fault is in the system itself, by which the teachers are con- 
trolled ? 

And are we, or are we not, correct when we assert that, as a gen- 
eral rule, the very best teachers in the world, under this system, can 
have no satisfactory assurance of being able to preserve proper dis- 
cipline or prevent the spread and growth of immoi-ality and crime 
amongst their pupils ? 

Should any public-school teacher take the ground that the fault 
lies not in the " system " but in the teachers, we shall then ask him 
to tell us by what practical process, taking things as we find them, 
it would be possible, under our existing " system" to rid ourselves 
of the present incompetent teachers and to replace them with better 
ones. 

But if, on the other hand, as we anticipate will be the case, every 
intelligent and really competent teacher will, on mature reflection, 
agree that the chief fault lies with our false system of education, then 
we shall earnestly ask, and confidently expect, the co-operation of 
every such teacher in our earnest efforts to sunder the shackles where- 
with this " system " enslaves him, and binds down, in the dungeons 
both of ignorance and vice, millions of America's loveliest, brightest, 
and most gifted sons and daughters. 



Comparison between Parental and anti- Parental Systems, n'j 



CHAPTEE XVI. 

COMPARISON BETWEEN THE PARENTAL AND ANTI-PARENTAL EDUCATIONAL 
SYSTEMS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF GREAT MEN — DOES OPPOSITION TO 
ANTI-PARENTAL EDUCATION ARISE FROM BIGOTRY? 

Extract from a speech on the school question, delivered by the 
author before the Convention Committee on Education, at Sacra- 
mento City, November 20, 1878 : 

After two hundred years' trial, your Massachusetts State system 
produced annually, in proportion to her population, ten times as many 
native white criminals, nearly twice as many native white paupers, 
four times as many suicides of all classes, more than three times as 
many deaths from syphilis, and one and a half times as many in- 
sane persons as did the parental system of Virginia. 

Then tell me what superior advantage Massachusetts has derived 
over Virginia from her anti-parental system of education. Is it found 
in the greater number and ability of her statesmen, in the superior elo- 
quence of her orators, or in the greater courage, skill, and heroic 
achievements of her warriors? 

It is undoubtedly true that Massachusetts has given to our country 
some of its very brightest and ablest literary men. The names of 
Prescott, Everett, and Bancroft — all students of Harvard University — 
and of William Cullen Bryant, who studied at Williams College, 
and of many other illustrious children of the old Bay State, are 
familiar as household words, and are pronounced with just pride 
wherever the English language is spoken ; but it would be difficult 
to trace the literary greatness of one of these distinguished men to 
public-school training. 

It is also true that Massachusetts gave birth to the illustrious Ben- 
jamin Franklin, but he was far more indebted for his education to 
his own mighty intellect, his indomitable perseverance, and the 
training of a Philadelphia printing office, than to the public schools 
of his native State. It is equally true that Massachusetts has given 
to the country two of its Presidents — the elder and the younger 
Adams. But it is no less true that they, too, were both educated at 
Harvard University, an institution which owes its origin rather to 
the private munificence of an Englishman than to the bounty of the 
State of Massachusetts. But as against these and a few lesser lights 
born upon the soil of Massachusetts, look at old Virginia's bright 
and glorious galaxy of statesmen, orators, and military heroes ! Look 
at the long line of illustrious Presidents she has given to the Repub- 
lic, beginning with the immortal Washington, the " Father of his 
Country," followed by Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Harrison, 
Tyler, and the unconquerable old " Rough and Ready," the hero of 
Buena Vista. It was she who gave to our country the author of 
the world-renowned Declaration of American Independence. It was 
she who gave us that matchless orator, the incomparable Patrick 



u8 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

Henry, whose burning eloquence fired the American heart with the 
thrilling sentiments of that noble Declaration. To her belongs the 
honor of having given us the General-in-Chief to lead our half- 
famishing and half-naked armies triumphantly through the terrible 
and bloody war of the Revolution. 

And when engaged in our more recent struggle with a neighbor- 
ing republic, they were Virginia's chosen sons, Zachary Taylor and 
Winfield Scott, who carried our victorious arms in triumph into the 
very capital city of Mexico, and won for us this Golden State, 
whose destinies you, gentlemen, now hold in your hands. Then, 
again, when our late terrible civil war burst upon the country, there 
stood at the head of each opposing host a child of Old Virginia ; and 
throughout that fearful contest did the military prowess of the Old 
Dominion shine forth in all its pristine splendor. 

However widely men may honestly differ as to the merits of that 
contest, there is no difference of opinion as to the manly courage, 
the splendid generalship, and the dauntless heroism of General 
Lee, of Stonewall Jackson, Turner Ashby, A. P. Hill, Joseph E. 
Johnston, and a host of other Confederate generals, whose earliest 
footprints were marked upon the soil of Old Virginia. 

And against this mighty galaxy of generals whom Virginia gave 
to the Confederate cause, what did Massachusetts do for the other 
side? Why, she gave you the Union-sliding Banks and Benjamin 
F. Butler, which last was not her own child, by-the-by, but one 
who, like the great Daniel Webster, had been imported from the 
granite hills of New Hampshire. * * * 

Your humble servant has been sometimes charged with being a 
bigoted Roman Catholic, and with seeking to establish the public- 
school system on a sectarian basis. Now, that you may know how 
far my Catholic sectarianism carries me on this school question, al- 
low me to assure you that, while I am an humble member of the 
Roman Catholic Church, and recognize to its fullest extent the 
teaching authority of that Church in religious matters, and, with a 
very few isolated exceptions, have the highest respect for the learn- 
ing, ability, and piety of its clergy, yet if every priest and bishop 
in California and in America, backed by the Holy Father, the Pope 
of Rome himself, should do so improbable and unwarranted a thing 
as to command me to send my child to be educated by a particular 
teacher, whom I, as the father of the child, should conscientiously 
believe an unsuitable person to be entrusted with that important 
work, it would not only be my right, but my bounden duty, both as 
a Roman Catholic and a parent, to disobey the command ; and 
why? Because this a matter in which the law of nature throws 
upon me the responsibility of acting according to my own best judg- 
ment, based upon all the lights within my reach. Leaving all other 
considerations aside, is itatall probable that even all these priests, bish- 
ops, and Pope, with all their learning and piety, could know as 
much of the teacher's real character as I, the father, who daily read 
that character in the language and conduct of my own child? 

And suppose that from that language and conduct, or from any 



Comparison between Parental and anti-Parental Systems. 119 

other source of information, I, the parent, should come to the con- 
clusion that the teacher of my young son or daughter is an unprin- 
cipled libertine, whose detestable conduct or vile maxims would, 
in a single day, or, perhaps, in a single moment, corrupt and ruin 
my child — shall it be said that I must still wait until my priest or 
bishop, or any other man, whether he be churchman or statesman, 
shall grant me permission to snatch my child from the jaws of de- 
struction ? 

No! no! This is a power, an authority over my child, which, 
whilst living, I can neither entrust to nor divide with any other man. 1 

And the very same right which I claim for myself I claim for every 
other parent, be he Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or non-religionist ; 
and this is the length, the breadth, the height, the depth, and the 
thickness of my Roman Catholic sectarianism on the school ques- 
tion ; and when I speak thus I believe I speak the sentiments of 
every well instructed Roman Catholic in the world, except it be a 
certain nondescript kind usually styling themselves Liberal Catho- 
lics, and whom, in California, you may generally know by the fact 
that, whenever in their presence the charge of religious bigotry is 
preferred against your humble servant in connection with this school 
question, they always stand ready to shout Amen ! to the slander. 

This is a class of Catholics, every one of whom, while agreeing 
with me that it would be wrong to surrender his parental authority 
to any bishop or priest, no matter how learned and holy he might 
be, would not at the same time hesitate to divide that authority with 
every hoodlum and loafer and bummer and drunkard ; with every 
thief, rake, and robber, provided only they have votes with which to 

1 The question may perhaps be asked : Does not the Roman Cath- 
olic Church to-day command its members to withhold their children 
from anti-parental and Godless public schools ? And do not Catho- 
lic parents consider themselves in conscience bound to obey the 
command? We answer most assuredly, Yes ! And if that Church 
should command its members to keep their children out of the fire, 
every intelligent and conscientious Catholic parent would doubtless 
feci bound to obey that command also. But suppose a priest or 
bishop or Pope, or all these combined, not only in violation of the 
command of their Church, but in defiance of the plainest dictates 
of the natural Jaw, should order a Catholic parent to cast his 
children into the fire, would it logically follow from the fore- 
going proposition that he must obey such an order as this? On 
the contrary, the moral law being incorporated into the Catholic's 
creed, and forming, as it does, an essential part thereof, no Catholic, 
who has been sufficiently educated in his religion to know what the 
moral law is, can ever regard it as a conscientious duty to violate 
that law in obedience to the dictates of any mortal man. Hence we 
do not hesitate to assert that if the Pope himself should command a 
Catholic parent, or any other parent, to send his children to an anti- 
parental, Godless, and crime-producing school, against his own 
judgment and conscience, it would be his duty not to obey. 



120 '''•Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

lift his miserable carcass into some petty office, where, with the prefix 
of honorable to his name, he will seek to cover his worse than 
Judas-like treason — treason to his children, treason to his country, 
and treason to his God. 

It has not unfrequently been said to me : "Were it not for your 
radical and uncompromising notions on the school question you 
could have this office, and that office, and the other office." I now 
give due notice, both to my friends and my foes, that I recognize 
no more honorable office on earth than the office of vindicating 
down-trodden truth, and I may add that I neither ask nor desire any 
higher office than the office of stripping and exposing in all their 
horrid and naked deformity, and lashing with the relentless scourge 
of truth, these trimming, time-serving, pot-house politicians, whether 
of high or low degree, called Liberal Catholics, who would not 
only barter their own birthright, but that of their children, and 
their children's children, to the end of time for a dirty mess of po- 
litical pottage. 



CHAPTEK XVII. 

MR. HENRY GEORGE AND REV. DR. MCGLYNN ON THE SAME PLATFORM. 

In the New York Freeman 's Journal of July 15, 1SS2, was 
copied from the New York Szm a synopsis of a speech delivered 
by Rev. Dr. McGlynn, of St. Stephen's Church, on the occasion 
of the then recent Davitt reception, which runs as follows : 

The Rev. Dr. McGlynn, of St. Stephen's Church, took the stand 
after Mr. Swinton. Dr. McGlynn addressed the throng as " Ladies 
and Gentlemen," adding that he presumed that there must be work- 
ing-women among them. He was glad to join in bidding Godspeed 
to Michael Davitt. He would make no apologies for being there, in 
spite of the length of his coat and his sacerdotal countenance. If 
anybody asked what the priest was doing there, anyhow, he would 
say that, being a priest, he did not lose his character as a man. 
[Applause.] A good priest ought to be a good man, and a great 
man. [Applause.] No cause could be worthy of the applause 
and sacrifices of men unless it was the cause of universal man. 
He was not ashamed to say he did not set up for a bloated aris- 
tocrat ; and he would say, as there were enough there to keep the 
secret, that he was not much of a lover of bloated aristocrats. The 
fact that he was a j^riest was an additional reason why he should be 
there. The cause of suffering, martyred poor in Ireland was the 
cause of true religion. If there seemed to be a divorce between the 
Church and the masses, it was not the fault of the masses. Perhaps 
it would be better for the clergy to come a little oftener out of their 
pulpits and come a little nearer to the people to discover the cause 
of their complaint, and, if possible, to apply the remedy. [Ap- 
plause long continued.] Christ himself was but an evicted peasant. 



Mr. Henry George and Rev. Dr. Mc Glynn. 121 

He had complained that, though the foxes had holes, and the birds 
of the air nests, the Son of Man had not where to lay His head. 
Christ had come to teach the poorest man that He was all of a man, 
and the taskmaker that he, too, was only a man, bound to the duties 
of common humanity. 

As to the land question, he would say, first, that the command- 
ment that bore upon that question was, "Thou shalt not steal." 
But who was it that was doing the stealing? The landlords would 
say : " Do not dare to touch the pig that pays the rent." It would 
be a calamity if anything should befall the gentleman that pays the 
rent. [Laughter.] The poor people of Ireland had got to believe 
that they must pay the rent, even if, after they had paid rent, they 
had to lie down and starve. But they had now come to believe that 
they might eat the pig themselves and throw the feet to the landlords. 
[Laughter.] The teachings of Davitt and Parnell were rapidly bring- 
ing the people to a knowledge of their rights. Was it possible that 
God could see without displeasure the state of affairs in Ireland? 
Such was not God's will, and men were not forbidden to curse such 
a system of iniquity. He claimed the right of human beings on this 
earth to so live that they might prepare themselves for a life here- 
after. He asked the blessing of God on Michael Davitt and such as 
he who were fighting the battle of the people. He would not have 
Mr. Davitt explain his gospel, but to preach it. We might have the 
same problem to solve in this country, and the sooner we solve it the 
better. He stood on the same platform as Henry George and Bishop 
Nulty, of Meath. [Applause.] If he did not feel that he was stand- 
ing on the eternal platform of eternal truth, liberty, and justice, he 
would not stand on that platform. As a Christian minister, he in- 
voked the blessing of God upon Michael Davitt. The truth needed 
martyrs like him. 

The Rev. Dr. McGlynn said that the more Irishmen the British 
Government put in jail the more effectual would the Irish movement 
become. Ireland would never gain anything from a sense of justice 
in the British Parliament. The only way was to excite British fears. 
The Englishman's heart was in his pocket, and if you attacked his 
pocket you attacked him in his most vital point. Dr. McGlynn had 
cordially approved of the " no-rent" manifesto from the beginning. 
The landlords never owned the lands, and, therefore, no rent could 
be due them. The non-payment of rent was justifiable on military 
principles. When a country was in a state of war or siege it was 
right to refuse supplies to the enemy. Ireland had been petitioning 
for centuries for the eighth of a loaf to eat, and had been turned 
away by the British Parliament. He advised Ireland to take the 
half loaf that was now offered by Parliament, and after that had 
been digested to sing out for the other half. 

While there are some things contained in the above synopsis of 
Rev. Dr. McGlynn's remarks which will challenge the approval of 
every friend of poor, down-trodden, and long-suffering Ireland, there 
are, at the same time, other things which we cannot read without 



122 k * Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

alarm, especially when we remember that they come as the utter- 
ances of a talented, eloquent, and influential priest of the Roman 
Catholic Church. Among other things, the reverend speaker is 
represented as declaring that " he stood on the same -platform as 
Henry George and Bishop Nulty, of Meat h." 

Now, while there seems to be some differences of opinion as to 
the precise position occupied on the land question by the Bishop 
of Meath, there can be no doubt as to that of Mr. Henry George, 
unless he has changed ground quite recently. In his work en- 
titled " Progress and Poverty," published about two years ago, 
he most clearly, explicitly, and with great foixe and ability an- 
nounced his sentiments on the land question. And if the views 
and sentiments of Mr. Henry George, as set forth in this work, 
constitute his platform, and the same platform is endorsed by 
Rev. Dr. McGlynn, then we have only to read Mr. George's said 
work in older to learn Rev. Dr. McGlynn's position. Mr. George, 
in the volume referred to, boldly proclaims the doctrine that private 
property in land is unjust, and the five chapters of the seventh book 
of his work, as above entitled, are devoted to the task of maintain- 
ing this proposition. As a sample of the ultra-communistic doc- 
trines set forth in Mr. George's platform, as expressed in his work, 
we here quote from page 305, where he says: "Though the 
sovereign people of the State of New York consent to the landed 
possessions of the Astors, the puniest infant that comes wailing into 
the world in the squalidest room of the most miserable tenement 
house becomes at that moment seized of an equal right with the 
millionaires. And it is robbed if the right is denied." In a foot 
note on the same page Mr. George calls this " a natural and inalien- 
able right to the equal use and enjoyment of land." By way of 
supporting so startling a theoiy the author asks what it is that 
" constitutes the rightful basis of property? What is it that enables 
a man to justly say of a thing, ' It is mine?' From what springs 
the sentiment which acknowledges his exclusive right as against 
all the world? Is it not, primarily, the right of a man to himself, to 
the use of his own powei-s, to the enjoyment of the fruits of his 
own exertions? Is it not this individual right which springs from, 
and is testified to by, the natural facts of individual organization — 
the fact that each particular pair of hands obey a particular brain 
and are related to a particular stomach ; the fact that each man 
is a definite, coherent, independent whole — which alone justifies 
individual owership? As a man belongs to himself, so his labor, 
when put in a concrete form, belongs to him." For this reason, 



Mr. Henry George and Rev. Dr. Mc Glynn. 123 

says Mr. George : " That which a man makes or produces is his 
own, as against all the world, to enjoy or to destroy, to use, to 
exchange, or to give. * * * * The pen with which I am writ- 
ing is justly mine. No other being can rightfully lay claim to it, 
for in me is the title of the producers who made it. It has become 
mine, because transferred to me by the importer, who obtained the 
exclusive right to it by transfer from the manufacturer, in whom, 
by the same process of purchase, vested the rights of those who 
dug the material from the ground and shaped it into a pen. Thus 
my exclusive right of ownership in the pen springs from the natural 
right of the individual to the use of his own faculties." 

We propose now to examine briefly the foundation whereon Mr. 
George rests his theory that there cannot justly be any private prop- 
erty in land ; and we shall undertake the task of showing that in 
order to be logical, and to maintain a position in harmony with the 
fundamental proposition whereon rests his whole theory, it will be 
necessary to go still farther and deny that there is or can be any 
such thing as a title to private property vested in man, whether 
such property be land or anything else. 

As we have just seen, Mr. George, as the basis of all property 
rights in man, asserts the proposition that '•'•'man belongs to him- 
self" and that "therefore what he makes or produces," and only 
what he makes or produces, " is his own, as against all the world, 
to enjoy or destroy, to use, to exchange, or to give." 

Now, it seems to us scarcely possible for any other writer to 
crowd so great a number of such gigantic fallacies into the same 
space as are contained in the foregoing propositions. In the first 
place we deny that " man belongs to himself," and in order to 
make good our denial it is only necessary to invoke another propo- 
sition advanced by the same learned author. For example : On the 
very page where this self-ownership of man is so triumphantly 
asserted, it is further maintained that, because of man's ownership 
of himself, whatever he " makes or produces is his own." If, then, 
it is true that the making of a thing gives the maker title to the thing 
made, man unquestionably belongs, not to himself— unless it can be 
shown that he made himself — but to God, his creator. And upon 
this palpably false proposition rests Mr. George's whole theory. 
But even if this false proposition were true, and if it were admitted 
that man really owns himself, still, according to Mr. George's idea 
as to the mode, and the only mode, of acquiring title to property, 
such acquisition would be utterly impossible, for, as we have just 
seen, the only original mode of acquiring title to property, accord- 



124 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Seriate. 

ing to Mr. George, is to make or produce it. Now to make a thing, 
in its true and proper sense, means to create it. But man can 
create nothing. Not so much as one grain of sand. No, nor even 
so much as the very smallest invisible mote or atom of matter. 
But our author would say : " When I used the word ' make* I did 
not' exactly mean to create, hence I coupled with it the word 
' produce]" meaning, thereby, simply changing the form of some 
material substance. Such a change, for example, as the farmer 
brings about when he is instrumental in converting the earth's rich 
soil into corn, beans, and potatoes, or the lumberman and the me- 
chanic when they fell the forest trees and convert them into houses, 
or the brick manufacturer when he works sand and clay into mortar 
and moulds them into brick. This, we presume, is the sense in 
which Mr. George intends to be understood when he uses the words 
" make or produce ." 

But here again the learned author's logic murders itself. On page 
302 he maintains that " no one can be rightfully entitled to the own- 
ership of anything which is not the produce of his labor, or the labor 
of some one else from whom the right has passed to him." And 
upon this ground he over and over again insists that there cannot 
justly be any such thing as private property in land, because no man 
can make or produce land. Now, who does not know that every 
tree and herb, every grain of corn, and every blade of grass that 
grows ; every beast, every bird, and every insect is formed from, 
and, in fact, constitutes a part of the very substance and cream of 
the land? Now, if a man cannot make land, neither can he make 
that particular and most valuable ingredient in the land, which en- 
ters into the growth and forms, as we have just said, the very sub- 
stance both of animal and vegetable matter. And if man does not 
and cannot own the land, of which these things are made, how is it 
possible for him to own the things themselves ? Should a thief take 
a bar of silver to which he had no title, but which belonged to 
another, and melt and run it into coin or silver spoons, no honest 
iudge in the world would say that the mere fact of his having ex- 
pended his skill and labor upon this piece of stolen metal could 
possibly give him a title either to the coin or the spoons into 
which he had manufactured it. Neither does it seem any more 
possible to change the rightful ownership of the soil by converting 
it into porridge than it does to change the ownership of a silver bar 
by converting it into spoons with which to eat the porridge. Ac- 
cording to Mr. George's theory, if we understand it aright, the man 
who, with his hard and honestly earned money, purchases a field 



Mr. Henry George and Rev. Dr. Mc Glynn. 125 

from one who holds a title, recognized as genuine by the solemn 
sanctions of his country's laws and the general consent of mankind, 
is, nevertheless, a robber if he denies that " the ptmiest infant 
that comes wailing into the world in the squalidest room of the most 
miserable tenement house becomes at that moment seized of an 
equal right " with himself. Nor do the monstrous conclusions of 
this strange logic even stop here. For, according to Mr. George, 
while the man who, under the solemn sanctions of law and with 
the general consent of mankind, invests his money in the purchase 
of land is a robber if he claims anything by virtue of his purchase, 
his neighbor, on the other hand, who neither invested a cent in said 
land nor inherited it from any one who has, and who, against the 
protest of the purchaser, in violation of the statutes of his country, 
and in defiance of the common judgment of mankind, would, by 
intrusion, take joint possession with such purchaser, and without 
consideration appropriate to his own use the soil which had been 
so purchased and enriched by another, would for so doing be worthy 
of all commendation as an honest and upright man ! Truly, if this 
is not the robber's gospel we know not what is. 

It seems to us that Mr. George's false conclusions as to what he 
calls the " injustice of private property in land" are at least partly 
due to his erroneous ideas as to what really constitutes the highest 
human title to property and the exact nature and extent of such 
title. The kind or degree of title of which he seems to be speaking 
rests, as we have seen, upon the false assumption that man is the 
absolute owner of himself, and, consequently, that he is the absolute 
owner of whatever he makes or produces, (although he make it out 
of God Almighty's material) , and that the character of this owner- 
ship is such as gives him the right, not only to use and enjoy as he 
pleases, but even to uttei'ly destroy the thing owned. Such a title 
as this we hold none but God alone possesses, because it is not man, 
as claimed by Mr. George, but only God who owns himself; and, 
consequently, it is only God who can rightfully claim the absolute and 
ultimate title to himself and to the things he has made, no difference 
whether those things be in the shape of lands, or cattle, or of fruits, 
flowers, and fields of waving grain. Neither do we see how it is 
possible for either Mr. George or his reverend follower to escape 
these conclusions without either denying the existence of God, who 
made all things, or else repudiating his own premises wherein it is 
asserted as a fundamental proposition that he, and only he, who 
owns himself owns also that which he has made. 

If a man belongs absolutely to himself, then he is responsible only 



126 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

to himself for his dealings with himself; and whether, on the one 
hand, he live the life of a lazy, worthless sot, and die the horrible 
death of the suicide, or whether, on the other, he lead a sober, in- 
dustrious, virtuous life, and then die a natural and honorable death — 
in either case he will have but exercised what Mr. George would 
call his inalienable right to do as he pleases with that which be- 
longs to himself. 

This brings us to a point where it will be in order to define what 
we understand to be the nature and extent of man's ownership in 
property, whether it be in the nature of lands or of goods and chat- 
tels. 

In order to have a clear idea of the nature and limits of man's 
title to property we must constantly bear in mind the fact, as already 
suggested, that man did not make himself, but that he was made by 
another, and, consequently, that he does not belong to himself, but 
that he belongs to another. That his entire physical, mental, 
and moral self; his body, with its flesh and blood, and bone 
and marrow ; its every muscle, fibre, and atom of matter, from the 
very tip of his hair to the end of his little toe-nail ; his soul, with its 
will, memory, and understanding; and, in fact, every faculty which 
it is possible for him to use, either in the acquisition of knowledge 
or the accumulation of worldly wealth, are all the absolute property 
of his Creator. That the earth, the air, and the ocean, with all their 
teeming wealth of animate and inanimate things, are also the prop- 
erty of Him who created them. Therefore whatever title man has 
acquired, or can acquire, to any species of property, whether it be 
land or personal chattels, must of necessity be from God, the only 
true owner, and subject at all times to His supreme will and control. 
That man has a genuine but subordinate title to the earth and the 
ocean, with all their varied productions, is manifest not only from 
*he testimony of natural reason, but also from the words of holy 
writ, for in the first chapter of Genesis it is written that God said : 
" Let us make man to our own image and likeness; and let him 
have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, 
and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that 
moveth upon the earth." Here, then, is the source of man's title, 
not only to his personal goods and chattels, but to his landed estates 
as well. For it will be observed from the language just quoted that 
man's " dominion" was not to be limited to the k ' fishes of the sea, 
and the fowls of the air, and the beasts," but was to be extended to 
" the whole earth " as well as to " every creeping thing that moveth 
upon the earth " Here, then, is man's title-deed, through which he 



Mr. Henry George and Rev. Dr. Mc Glynn. 127 

traces back to his Lord and Maker his right to property, both real 
and -personal. 

It may be that Mr. George denies the genuineness of our title- 
deed, but we presume the reverend New York convert to Mr. 
George's platform, with whom we are partly dealing, will not 
join in that denial. 

We have said that man's title to property, both real and personal, 
is but a subordinate and qualified one, subject at all times to the su- 
perior and ultimate title of the Creator, and of this fact we must not 
lose sight. In order that we may the more certainly keep this fact 
steadily in view, let us inquire a little more closely into the reason 
for this limitation upon man's title to property. No intelligent being 
has ever yet knowingly and designedly put into shape anything 
without a purpose. And the Almighty, being infinitely wise, has 
neither made nor done anything without an infinitely wise purpose. 
And being infinitely good, He has neither made nor done anything 
without an infinitely good purpose. Hence we are led to conclude 
that when He made the earth, the air, and the ocean, with all their 
elements of material wealth, He must have made them for an infi- 
nitely wise and an infinitely good purpose. Consequently, when He 
gave to man dominion over all these things it must have been 
His will that he use them in a manner to correspond with the 
objects for which they were made. But what was the Almighty's 
object in creating these elements of worldly wealth of which we are 
speaking? Was it not to promote His own honor and glory, and at 
the same time to supply man's proper physical, mental, and moral 
wants, and thereby to contribute to his happiness? 

The gift by the Almighty to man of dominion over the earthly 
creation was of course a gift in common, whereby every human 
being was allowed to draw from this common and abundant her- 
itage, and appropriate to his own use such articles — not previously 
appropriated — as were suited to his necessities, tastes, and lawful 
desires. And when men began this process of individual appro- 
priation, then and there began the origin and history of private 
property, without the necessity of man's having to make ,an article 
as the only test of his rightful ownership. The man who first 
found a wild turkey's nest, a swarm of bees, or a precious stone 
upon unclaimed land, did not make either the bees, the turkey eggs, 
or the precious stone ; and yet, if he chose to have it so, they be- 
came his property by the mere act of appropriation. If the learned 
author of " Progress and Poverty" were to go into a wild forest, 
and cut the timber and saw the lumber with which to build him a 



128 " Poison Drops'" in the Federal Senate. 

house, he would doubtless say that the house, when built, was his, 
because he made it. But was not the material his even before he 
built the house? And yet he did not make the material. If, after 
he had selected his lumber tree, and was on the ground ready for 
work, clearly indicating his purpose — even before his axe had 
pierced the outer bark — some later claimant had made his appear- 
ance and objected to his cutting the tree, would he not have said, 
" Sir, this is my tree !" But according to Mr. George's theory, by 
what right could he have claimed that it was his tree ? For surely 
he had not made the tree, any more than he had made the land 
whereon the tree had grown. Hence, we claim that Mr. George 
is in error when he assumes that it is impossible for man justly to 
have private property in a thing which was not made or produced 
either by himself or by some other person, viz., some other human 
being, whose title he holds. And it is upon this erroneous assump- 
tion that our author denies the justice of private property in land ; 
that is to say, because man did not make the land. But if it is true 
that, by the simple act of appropriation, man can become the rightful 
owner of a nest of turkey eggs, a swarm of bees, a precious stone, 
or a timber tree, which neither he nor any human being whose title 
he claims ever made or produced, then upon what principle can it 
be said that, by a similar act of appropriation, man cannot justly 
acquire private property in land not previously appropriated ? 

It must be borne in mind, however, that man's title to property, 
whether in land or in movables, and whether held in community or 
in severalty, is a qualified and limited title in the nature of a trust, 
coupled with an obligation to so use such property as to subserve the 
end for which it was created, namely : the honor of God and the 
welfare of man. Therefore, it is not true, as held by Mr. George, 
that man holds, or can hold, even what he calls his own property, 
by such an absolute title as to give him ipso facto a right to destroy 
that property. To show, by a simple illustration, how monstrous 
is the doctrine here asserted by our author, let us suppose the case 
of a very wealthy man, who counts his money by the millions of 
dollars. He neither owns nor claims to own a foot of land, and 
his money has all come to him through what Mr. George would call 
just and legitimate channels. To make the matter clear, we will 
suppose that he has dug every dollar of it with his own pick and 
shovel out of the rich placers of California. No sooner has he 
amassed this immense fortune than he learns that a most deadly 
plague has simultaneously attacked the people of New York, Bos- 
ton, Philadelphia, Charleston, Savannah, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. 



Mr. Henry George and Rev. Dr. Mc Glynn. 129 

Louis, Chicago, Louisville, New Orleans, and San Francisco, and 
is rapidly spreading to all the neighboring towns and cities, and 
even into the homes of the rural districts. He has further learned that 
one and o?tly one remedy has been found for this dreadful destroyer of 
his race, and that remedy is quinine. With the quickness of 
thought a gigantic project is resolved upon, and in the execution of 
this project he immediately telegraphs to every druggist in the 
United States, purchasing, at whatever cost, all the quinine in the 
country. This quinine he causes to be shipped to New York, and 
there securely stored in an iron warehouse. Owing to this com- 
plete monopoly of the only medicine that could cure the plague, 
death is moving down men, women, and children by tens and even 
hundreds of thousands per day. By the use of quinine every patient 
could be cured ; without it not one can live. Our millionaire is be- 
sieged with applications for the precious drug. But all to no pur- 
pose. First one thousand, then five, then ten thousand dollars per 
ounce are proffered. And while the wealthy ply him with offers of 
money, the poor, in the name of God and humanity, beseech and 
implore, on bended knees and with tearful eyes, for just enough med- 
icine to save a perishing daughter, a stricken son, a dying wife, or an 
expiring mother. But no ! Neither for the love of money nor in the 
name of sweet charity will he let go so much as one solitary atom of 
his hoarded medicine, and, finally, in the exercise of what Mr. 
George claims to be his undoubted right (to either " enjoy or 
destroy" his own property) he causes this entire stock to be 
dumped into the ocean, leaving millions of his countrymen to per- 
ish who could and would have been saved if such a wretch as he 
had never been born. Yet, according to the ethics of Mr. Henry 
George's platform, this diabolical act of wholesale murder would 
be but the exercise of a man's right to do as he pleases with his 
own property. As for ourselves, we plead guilty to such a degree 
of obtuseness in our moral vision that we cannot possibly distinguish 
the difference between the guilt of the monster who would expend 
his money in the purchase of poison for the wanton destruction of 
human life and that other monster who, when the fatal poison of a 
raging pestilence was doing its work of death, would use Ms money 
for the purchase and destruction of the only antidote which could 
save the lives of the infected. 

Or, take another illustration : If a man has a right to do as he 
pleases with the property which Mr. George would call his own, 
because his labor has earned it, then who can censure the drunken 
husband and father who, on every Saturday night, squanders his 



130 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

week's wages for whiskey, while the wife of his bosom and the 
children of his loins are left naked and hungry, to shiver with 
cold and to die of starvation? And if this theory of Mr. George's, 
which holds that the lawful owners of personal property have a 
right to do with it as they please, is a true one, it furnishes a com- 
plete justification for all the outrages that were ever practised upon 
poor suffering humanity by any and every species of monopolists — 
except land monopolists — from the morning of creation down to the 
present moment, provided, only, that such monopolists acquired their 
wealth either by producing it or else by securing to themselves the 
title of the producers. According to this doctrine, the man of money 
may buy up all the food within a thousand miles of his plethoric store- 
houses, and thus force provisions up to starvation prices, spreading 
famine, starvation, and death amongst the poor, and yet do nothing 
but what a man may rightfully do with his own property. 

The solemn truth is that man does not, never did, and never can, 
own property in that absolute sense in which Mr. George seems to 
understand the word "ownership." It is only the Almighty, we re- 
peat, who does or can own property in that absolute sense ; and when 
He entrusted man with dominion over His property He never author- 
ized him to use it for any purpose antagonistic to the great object for 
which he created it. When Dives refused to allow poor Lazarus to 
eat the crumbs that fell from his table he did exactly what Mr. George 
claims he had a right to do, because these were the crumbs of Dives, 
and Mr. George says a man has a right to do as he pleases with his 
own property. And yet, because Dives, like our New York divine, 
chose to stand upon Mr. Henry George's platform, the Scripture as- 
sures us that when he died he was buried in hell. 

No, it is not true that man has a right to use even the productions of 
his own hands as he pleases, unless he should please to use them in ac- 
cordance with the great law of justice and charity ; in other words, un- 
less he please to use them for the honor and the glory of the Almighty 
Giver and the good of man — for man simply holds property in trust, 
and it is only thus that he can execute that trust. It is true that 
along with this trust comes the right to the personal use of so much 
of the trust-fund as is proper to gratify the possessor's lawful desires 
and to contribute to his individual legitimate comfort, as well as the 
comfort of those depending upon him, but the "crumbs" that fall 
from his table, namely, wealth not needed for other purposes, should 
not be withheld from the hungry, the naked, and the homeless. He 
is the Almighty's almoner, and is, therefore, morally a criminal if he 
wastes his Master's substance and leaves the poor to perish. 



Mr. Henry George and Rev. Dr. Mc Glynn. 131 

We do not say that the rich man should recklessly distribute all 
his surplus wealth indiscriminately amongst his needy neighbors, 
leaving himself no surplus capital with which to accumulate more. 
Not at all ; for this would be like turning a lot of thoughtless, hun- 
gry children into the buttery, where they would soon eat themselves 
sick and waste more than they would eat. But the truly charitable 
man should not fail to hold the reins of prudence over his liberality. 
We hold that every man has, primarily, a moral right to the free use 
and enjoyment of so much property as he can honestly acquire, either 
by appropriation, by labor, by inheritance, by purchase, or by ex- 
change, whether in lands or personal chattels. 

When we speak of honestly acquiring property, we mean acquir- 
ing it in such manner as does not interfere with the vested rights of 
others. 

Enough has already been said to show that he who would over- 
turn all human title to land, upon the ground that man did not make 
the land, need not be long in finding an equally plausible reason 
for denying likewise all title to personal pi'operty. Because, as 
already remarked, man did not make the material which enters 
into and constitutes the very substance of all kinds of personal pi-op- 
erty. And if, as claimed by Mr. George, the man who, with the 
highest sanction of human law, enters upon and appropriates to 
himself a piece of hitherto unappropriated land, clears the dense 
forests, cuts away the roots, plows the ground, plants him an 
orchard, builds him a house, and digs him a well, acquires no title 
to the land because he did not make it, then may it not, with at 
least equal justice, be contended that the man who, under the sanc- 
tion of the same human law, digs down into the bowels of the 
earth and draws forth coal or iron, or copper or silver, or gold or 
precious stones, has no title and can convey no title to any of these 
things, because, forsooth, he did not make them? And would not 
the same kind of logic serve equally well to prove an industrious, 
thrifty farmer to be a heartless robber, who would deny to his 
indolent neighbors an equal right with himself to take and eat the 
corn from his crib and the bacon from his meat-house, because 
these articles of food were drawn from and are, in fact, a part of 
the substance of the land ? 

We are fully aware that Mr. George does not yet carry his doc- 
trines to the extent of denying the justice of man's title to -personal 
property, but what we maintain is, that the logic of these doctrines, 
if followed to its legitimate conclusion, would of necessity lead 
to that result. Let Mr. George's premises be generally accepted 



132 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

and it will not be long before some more logical communist than he, 
building upon the foundation which he has laid, will readily reach 
the climax just indicated. 

Mr. George's communistic theories would be far less dangerous 
in this country were it not for the fact that so much has been and 
is daily being done by the American people to prepare the public 
mind for their favorable and logical acceptance. When the doctrine 
is boldly proclaimed that every child born into the world may 
demand, not simply as a charity due to the poor, but as a right 
clue to all, that he be educated at the public expense, there can be 
no logical denial of the fact that the general acceptance of such a 
doctrine is the practical acceptance of a communism even broader 
and more sweeping in its grasp than that contended for by the 
author of "Progress and Poverty." 

If, as maintained by Blackstone, and Kent, and Wayland, and 
every other standard author on either law or morals, it is the 
natural duty of parents to '"feed, to clothe, and to educate" their 
own children ; in other words, if parents are under the very same 
obligation to supply their own children with a proper education 
that they are to supply them with proper victuals and clothes, is it 
not just as communistic to take one man's money with which to 
educate the children of another, when that other is in duty bound 
to educate them himself, as it would be to take the same man's 
money with which to feed and clothe the same children ? 

" Communism," as defined by Webster, means " the doctrine of a 
community of property, or the negation of individual rights in 
property." Now, if the man who has earned, or otherwise law- 
fully acquired, pi-operty has no individual right thereto as against 
his neighbors who desire to use it for the education of their chil- 
dren, why may not these same neighbors with equal justice declare 
that he has no individual right to the same property against those 
who choose to take it for the feeding and clothing of their children ? 
And if they may rightfully communize — so to speak — his property 
for the feeding and clothing of their children, why may they not 
with like justice " communize" the same property for the feeding 
and clothing of themselves ? In fact, if it is just and right to force 
the whole people to put their private property into a common fund 
in order to supply the educational wants of children which the natu- 
ral law requires their fathers and mothers to supply at their indi- 
vidual expense, we can see no logical reason why the whole people 
might not justly and rightfully be forced to put their indwidual prop- 
erty into a like common fund in order to supply any othe - want which 



Mr. Henry George and Rev. Dr. Mc Glynn. 133 

the natural law requires each member of society to supply for himself. 
We are not now denying the propriety or the justice of levying a tax 
to pay, to a certain extent, for the education of children whose par- 
ents are unable to educate them. That is undoubtedly justifiable 
upon the same grounds upon which we would justify the furnishing 
of both children and parents with victuals and clothes at public 
expense whenever their necessities were such as to render them 
objects of public charity. But the levy of a public-school tax for 
the education of all the children in the State, rich as well as poor, 
rests upon no such foundation. The levy of this communistic pub- 
lic-school tax for the maintenance of schools instituted for all the 
children is, by the advocates of the system, sometimes likened to 
the levy of a public-road tax, or a tax for the support of the Gov- 
ernment. But the cases are by no means parallel, as a moment's 
reflection will show. To construct or to take care of a public road 
is- in no proper sense a private duty. If it were, we could no more 
rightfully shift that private duty on to the public shoulders than any 
other private duty. If the road to be built or repaired, instead of 
being a public road, were a private one within the proprietor's own 
enclosure, where is there an honest man whose sense of justice would 
not revolt at the idea of taxing the public to pay for the construction 
or repair of such a road ? As for the man whose domestic relations 
are of so unsatisfactory a character that he is unable to claim any 
individual rights in the children which he calls his, other than such 
as he may properly accord to his neighbors, we can see no injustice 
in his demanding that those neighbors assist him in supplying such 
children with the means of an education. But whoever, when 
looking "upon a child of his household with the faith and confidence 
of one who has never for a moment distrusted the fidelity of its 
mother, can say with unfaltering faith, " This, indeed, is my child!' 
ought never, never, to repudiate the high, the holy, and the God- 
imposed obligation of educating such child. Indeed, according to 
our humble way of thinking, there is no kind or degree of com- 
munism so utterly revolting as that which, for educational purposes, 
virtually asserts a community of title, not only to the property, but 
also to the children of the private citizen. Yet, this, unfortunately, 
is the communism of America ; a communism having for its main 
trunk an educational system the most ruinously expensive and the 
most demoralizing that the world ever saw. A communism whose 
poisonous roots have spread far and wide, and struck deep down 
into the soil of American literature, American politics, and, we may 
say, American religion. 



134 " Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

Millions of American children, of all creeds, classes, and condi- 
tions, daily gather beneath the wide-spreading branches and inhale 
the poisonous odors of this deadly upas. Tens of thousands of these 
little ones die annually from diseases contracted in its overcrowded 
and tainted atmosphere, while hundreds of thousands meet a moral 
death ten thousand times worse for themselves, their parents, and 
their country than that physical death which consigns its victims to 
an untimely grave. These children, as a rule, grow to manhood 
and womanhood without any proper knowledge of the duties which 
they owe to their fathers and mothers, to their country or their God. 
About the only thing which they are taught touching the rights of 
property is, that every child born into the world is entitled to an 
education at the expense of the community, which, as we have seen, 
is the very quintessence of the logic of communism. Under these 
circumstances, with the whole educating power of the country en- 
listed in the work of inculcating into the minds of American youth 
both the doctrines and practices of communism, and the whole 
political power of both State and Federal Governments backing the 
movement, how long will it be before the morally depraved and 
penniless portion of Young America, with the sword in one hand 
and the torch in the other, will demand of the wealthy an equal 
share of their worldly goods, and, in the language of Mr. George, 
will call it " robbery" if their demand be denied? 

And when this anti -parental, Godless, and communistic training, 
which so many millions of American children are now receiving, 
shall have matured its legitimate fruits of violence and blood and 
plunder, whither shall the guilty authors and architects of ruin — 
the uncompromising friends and advocates of this kind of training- 
find protection, either for their liberty, their lives, or their material 
wealth? Will they invoke the shield of the law? Alas ! they will 
find, to their bitter sorrow, that those whom they have taught to 
despise parental authority, and to ignore both God and His com- 
mandments, will respect no law but that of their own unbridled 
appetites. Will they rely for protection upon physical force ? Unfor- 
tunately for them the physical force will be upon the other side. 
When, tiierefore, the evil day shall come, let not the man of means — 
who now boastfully pours out his money like water in order to in- 
doctrinate the rising generation in the false and dangerous principles 
of communism — shrink from the logical results of his own blind 
folly. To-day he sows the wind ; to-morrow let him prepare to 
reap the whirlwind. 

Mr. Henry George draws a frightful and, undoubtedly in the 



Mr. Henry George and Rev. Dr. Mc Glynn. 135 

main, a very truthful picture of the poverty, misery, and degradation 
which have been, and are being, brought about by the improper use 
of large fortunes, whereby the poor are daily becoming poorer and 
the rich richer. This, however, is not the necessary result of accu- 
mulated wealth, but arises, first, from the dishonest and even diaboli- 
cal means resorted to for its procurement ; and next, from the mean, 
sordid, selfish, and criminal uses for which it is employed by those 
who hold with Mr. George that they have a right to do as they 
please with their own property. 

Great worldly wealth, whether in land or money, just like great 
worldly learning, like steam, electricity, and the printing-press, is a 
great power either for good or evil, depending mainly for its good 
or bad fruits upon the good or bad purposes for which it is used, 
and the purposes for which it is used depend chiefly upon the good 
or bad qualities of the man by whom it is used. For the bad use 
and the consequent evil results to society from each and all of these 
mighty engines of power, whether they be in the shape of worldly 
wealth, worldly wisdom, or anything else, we know of but one ef- 
fectual remedy, and that is to make more just, more charitable, and, 
in a word, more virtuous those who in future are destined to guide 
and control them. To this end every lover of his country and his 
race should arouse himself to a realizing sense of the great and 
overshadowing importance of properly educating and training up 
in the paths of virtue those who will soon have it in their power 
to either lift the nations into a loftier and purer atmosphere of truth, 
justice, religion, humanity, and fraternal love, or to plunge them into 
still deeper, darker, and fouler depths of crime, misery, and hopeless 
ruin. The very first lesson we should teach our children is, that 
man does not belong to himself but to his Creator ; that he is as 
much the absolute property of his Maker as is the planet upon which 
he lives ; that in the vast economy of God's eternity each individ- 
ual man is of far more value than the mightiest orb that rolls in 
space ; that his superior value over that of the material universe is not 
found in the superior quality of the clay of which his body is formed, 
but in his noble attributes of soul, which distinguish him as an im- 
mortal child of God and an heir to everlasting happiness. He should 
be taught that worldly wealth, like worldly wisdom, is only truly 
valuable in proportion as it aids us in our journey from this land of 
misery, sin, sorrow, and death to our true country, and that it can 
only so aid us when used in the manner which its Great Author had 
in view in creating it ; and that unless properly used it becomes not 
a help but a positive hindrance to man's happiness both here and 



136 "Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

hereafter. But how is it possible for our children to learn in what 
manner their Maker would have them use property unless they first 
learn what is that Maker's will as regards themselves, and the duties 
which they owe both to Him and to their fellow-man ? In other 
words, unless they learn, both in theory and in practice, so far as 
the same may be applicable to themselves, the great law of morality 
and religion which God has given to man for his government. 

Without this knowledge, which is absolutely essential to enable 
them to make a proper use both of their worldly wisdom and 
worldly wealth, neither the one nor the other can be anything else 
than a source of danger and disaster both to themselves and to society. 

He who, in the midst of his family, would place in the hands of his 
little child a Colt's revolver, both loaded and cocked, without first 
teaching him how to use and how not to use it, could only be re- 
garded as either crazy or criminally foolish ; for he would be imper- 
illing not only the life of his child, but that of every one within the 
reach of his pistol. Like unto him is the father who would store the 
mind of his child with worldly knowledge, or lavish upon him heaps 
of worldly wealth, without teaching him the law which God has 
given him for his guidance in the use of that knowledge or that 
wealth. And yet is not this precisely what the great body of Ameri- 
can people, of all parties, creeds, and conditions, are doing to-day , both 
as regards their worldly knowledge and their worldly wealth ? Is it 
not a fact that the great body of American people, while engaged, as 
it were, in a death struggle to grow rich and to leave their children 
rich, and while expending about $100,000,000.00 annually in order 
to cram the minds of these children with worldly knowledge, are 
at the same time not only taking no pains to instruct these little ones, 
or to cause them to be instructed, in the use which they ought and 
are in conscience bound to make both of their leai-ning and their 
wealth, but are absolutely closing every avenue through which it 
is possible for them to receive such instruction? To fathers and 
mothers has the Almighty entrusted the sacred duty of teaching 
their little ones, or causing them to be taught, the great moral and 
religious truths which should always constitute their rule of action 
in their dealings both with God and their fellow-men. Then how 
lamentable is the fact that, instead of discharging this most sacred 
duty, vast multitudes of parents, of all creeds and classes, seem vir- 
tually to have conspired against God, against their children, and 
against society by denying to those children, through the medium 
of an anti - parental and Godless education, that very knowledge 
without which they can neither be true to themselves, to their 
country, nor their God? 



Mr. Henry George and Rev. Dr. Mc Glynn. 137 

We sincerely believe that moral and religious training are nec- 
essary for a child in order that it may know the proper use to 
make of this world's goods and this world's wisdom, but we hold 
that, amidst conflicting creeds and opinions on religious questions, 
it is not for the public but for the parental conscience to direct 
and control, by the aid of the best lights before it, the religious 
education of the child. And it is not for the public but the 
parental purse to pay for that education ' We hold it to be a viola- 
tion of religious liberty to force a man to pay for teaching a religion 
against which his conscience revolts, as well as it is to force him to 
accept such teachings for his children. But under our existing ed- 
ucational system moral and religious teachings are as utterly impos- 
sible, without doing violence to somebody's conscience, as they 
would be in a law-established church. Hence, the language of 
the 7th proposition of our platform (see ante) is so framed as to 
recognize the propriety and the liberty of imparting to children 
moral and religious education without cost to the public, and upon 
a basis objectionable to the conscience of none. 

While we adhere to the proposition that religious education is 
essential both for the welfare of the child and the good of the 
State, yet we would not have the public to force such educa- 
tion on any child against the conscientious objection of its parents, 
because it is not the public but the parent that is the God-appointed 
guardian of the child ; and hence, it is not the public, but the pa- 
rental, conscience that must answer for any neglect to discharge the 
duties of so sacred a trust. Direful as may be the result of allow- 
ing multitudes of children to grow up in the community with no 
knowledge of God or His holy law, yet it would be infinitely worse 
to allow the political State to domineer over the consciences of its 
citizens. Moreover, it is undoubtedly true that, while oppressive 
laws sometimes make hypocrites, they never make men truly relig- 
ious. While we would allow even the infidel to educate his own 
children in his own way, for a still stronger reason we would desire 
that religionists of all creeds should enjoy a like privilege, for we 
regard almost any sort of religion which is sincerely professed, how- 
ever erroneous in itself, as furnishing some sort of safeguard to so- 
ciety such as cannot be found in the utter scepticism of the atheist. 
Moroever, the faint and almost imperceptible glimmerings of relig- 
ious truth which penetrate the dark caverns of the most erroneous 
of creeds, if faithfully followed, may serve to lead the honest 
searchers for light into the full blaze of open day. Hence we can 
see no reason for any division or even for the least discord amongst 



i^S '•'•Poison Drops" in the Federal Senate. 

the friends of educational liberty and reform. Even the confirmed 
atheist, in standing upon our platform, will find himself at liberty, 
without molestation from man, to indulge his dark dreams of anni- 
hilation and despair, and to pour into the startled ear of his own child 
the gloomy forebodings which blacken and make desolate the dreary 
landscape of his own deluded soul. But he must leave to his 
neighbors at least the poor privilege of believing what he proclaims 
himself unable to believe, and of pointing out to their little ones 
the path of duty as the path which leads to a better land, where, 
free from death, and sin, and sorrow, they may bask in the bright 
sunshine of an eternal day. 

We sincerely believe, in the very depths of our soul, that the only 
lasting and effective cure for the crying wrongs with which greedy 
monopolists, heartless tyrants, and unprincipled politicians are 
scourging our country, and the only preventive against the still 
more direful disaster with which we are threatened at the hands of 
communistic demagogues, is to be found in a more widely spread 
and deeper moral and religious sentiment among the people. And 
it is our earnest conviction that, in order to implant this sentiment 
in the minds and hearts of our people, we require mov* of our 
Savioui-'s gospel and less of Mr. Henry George's. 



TO THE READER. 



The question is now Vicing warmly discussed as to whether or no 
morality and religion should be taught in the public (or Slate go^ 
erned) schools. As germane to this question the author and a fe\ 
other friends of educational liberty and reform send this pamphk 
free of charge, to several thousand citizens of Washington, in order 

First. To prove that the transfer of the educational control 
children from their own fathers and mothers into the hands of 
political State is itself a violation of the moral law. (See pages 
to 5 S.) 

Seco?jdly. To prove that as a rule wherever politicians, inste 
of parents, have controlled the education of children there has beer 
an increase of crime bearing a direct proportion, to the amount 
educational monev invested. (See pages 9 to 36 and 5-S to 65.) 

TJ/irdly. To prove that the State cannot teach, morality withoi 
teaching religion as its basis, and that it cannot teach religion with 
out the virtual establishment of a State religion and the destructior 
of religious liberty. (See pages 6=; to 73- 

Fourthly. To prove that since parents throughout the countiy 
have surrendered to the political state their God-given authority 
supervise and control their own children's education, and ha 
scquently, as a rule, ceased to concern themselves with the cliarat 
ter of school books used by their children, the definition of ahm 
cverv leading political word in the English language, as taught i 



the public schools, has been so changed and perverted as to embc 
a deadlv political heresy, tending directly to subvert the right 
local self-government, and to prepare the minds of the rising gei 
eration For the establishment of a consolidated despotism on the ruii 
of civil and religious liberty. (See pages 38 to 42.) 

Fifthly. To prove that under the existing system the best teac 
ers in the world are powerless to retried} - the evils referred to. fo 
the reason that the system is as destructive of the proper indepem 
ence of teachers as it is of parental authority. ( See pages 99 to r if 

Sixthly. To point out a plan— already endorsed by many of tl 
ablest public and private educators and clearest thinkers in America 
irrespective of political and religious differences — whereby patent 
authority in educational matters can be restored ; every child fu 
rushed with the facilities for a good, practical, secular educati< 
suitable to its necessities, without the least encroachment upon an 
body's liberty of conscience, and without any expenditure of publ 
money for religious teaching. (Sec pages 73 to 99.) 



AUTHOR'S REQUEST. 

Every person to whom this pamphlet is sent is earnestly request* 
— as the only consideration for sending it— to carefully read and c< 
sider its contents, and then, in the interest of truth, to drop the autli 
a tew lines, either approving'^ condemning, or criticising it with tl 
utmost candor and freedom. 



ADDRESS: Washington, D. C, Lock Box 352. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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029 445 934 



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